


The Fine Dimensional Line

by Kylia



Series: Both Sides Of The Looking Glass [1]
Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Alternate Timelines, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, And It Actually Kind Of Works Out Sorta Well, And Work Out My Issues With Her As A Character By Writing Her With An Eye Towards Fairness, F/M, Gen, In Which I Finally Stop Hating Melinda May, Sersiously don't expect them to get together for a while, The Skyeward is Slowburn, expect angst
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-03-18
Updated: 2019-03-02
Packaged: 2019-04-04 07:10:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 9
Words: 26,772
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14014938
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kylia/pseuds/Kylia
Summary: "Skye's a traitor, Coulson. She tried to sell us all out to Hydra. Twice." Grant Ward and Kara Palamas, desperate to escape Hydra, take a gamble on one of Fitz's mad ideas - and end up in an alternate world, one where the fine line between loyalty and treachery, love and hate, worked out completely differently.





	1. Desperate Escape

**Author's Note:**

> **Disclaimer:** Look at AoS. Now look at the AoS fics I've written. Do I _look_ like I own the show?
> 
> **Author's Note:** This is a Skyeward fic, though it will take a while for things to get there. It's also a bit unusual - ish, as far as Skyeward fics go, though not as unusual as some. If you hate Ward, hate Skyeward, this probably isn't the fic for you, though maybe you'll like this one, maybe you won't. Equally, if you're a Ward/Skyeward fan who hates the rest of or most of the rest of the cast - I absolutely understand where you're coming from, but this really isn't the fic for you. If you're a Ward fan who hates Skye - well, then this is in no way shape or form the fic for you, and you might want to just hit the back button and leave completely.
> 
> And now that I've given you that up front warning, that caveat emptor, if you're still interested in the fic, read on! If not, don't read, because hey, why would you read what you don't think you'll like?
> 
> Thanks extended to Stargazerdaisy for beta-reading. I also blame her for this fic entirely, because I was talking to her when the idea invaded my brain. :P

The Fine Dimensional Line

By Kylia

Chapter 1: Desperate Escape

**September 26th, 2015**

**Abandoned Warehouse**

**City Limits, Dayton, OH**

"Shit." Kara lowered the binoculars and turned to Grant, the expression on her face the grimmest he'd seen yet - and that was saying a lot, given the last year. "It's Hydra."

Grant Ward shook his head, "Of course it's Hydra. Who the hell else would it be? Even the government has given up on hunting down what's left of S.H.I.E.L.D." Five black vans, each one carrying at least four Hydra goons - ex military, highly trained mercenaries, every last one of them.

"I told Fitzsimmons we should have left yesterday," Grant growled, his hand going to his gun. "The Mines should take out the first two vans - give us enough time to -" before he could finish his thought, the sound of helicopters roared overhead - a low speeding whistle and-

"DOWN!" Kara grabbed his arm even as he realized what was coming, pulling him back into the warehouse as they dropped to the floor, heat blossoming out behind them when all three cars blew up - taking their best chance for escape.

 _It's over_. Grant didn't really notice the thought in his head for a split second, but then he did.

 _It's over_. 

Months of running from Hydra, ever since the Playground was taken, ever since Coulson, Victoria, May, Hunter, Morse and Mack were killed. As far as Grant knew, the four of them might even be the last of S.H.I.E.L.D. anywhere in the world.

And now it was over. Hydra had found them, and this time they were done acting covertly. They'd blown up any chance the four of them had of escape, any chance they'd get out alive.

"Grant! Come on!" Kara grabbed his arm again, pulling him up as she shouted over the sound of the Helicopter's landing. "We need to fall back! Fitzsimmons!"

Grant shook his head violently when she mentioned the two scientists, dropping back into full specialist mode. He still had a mission. That mission was going to kill him, but if he was going to die, it was to die protecting people. He'd go down fighting.

"Go, I'm right behind you," Grant pulled his gun out, running after Kara as she opened a door, hurrying down stairs into a basement that wasn't on any available blueprint. "We need to block the doors, lay more mines-"

"Grant, there's no point. If they're willing to be this public about it, bring in fucking attack helicopters - not cloaked quinjets - then there's going to be too many of them for us to fight, even for a few minutes. There's only one chance we have, and I say we take it!"

"No - Kara - that's - even if Fitz's crazy idea actually could work, he said they were months away from trying it!" 

"Yeah, well at this point I'd rather take the chance than just die pointlessly if we have another option. So what do you say, Grant, want to visit another world?" Reaching what looked like a black wall, Kara broke open a hidden panel and placed her palm on the scanner. 

It had been a mad, desperate plan, but these were made desperate times. In the fight from the Playground, the had managed to recover two things from the attacking Hydra forces - the Tesseract-powered gun they'd first found in Peru what felt like a lifetime ago, and a data-drive that mentioned a number of esoteric experiments Hydra had been running.

Experiments that included interdimensional travel - at least theoretically. Grant didn't understand all the science behind it, but he understood the idea - a world that was still Earth, but where anywhere could be different. Where choices that were made were made differently. 

A world where Hydra hadn't won.

It was a crazy, desperate gamble, but Fitz was convinced that with the Tesseract Fuel Cell, they could make it work. Rip open the fabric of the universe and jump into another reality.

And everything that Grant had seen working for S.H.I.E.L.D. had him willing to believe it was worth a try - there was nowhere on this world the could hide from Hydra. Not for long. And while the governments of the world weren't actively hunting S.H.I.E.L.D. any more, all four of them were wanted men and women. 

And none of them had the resources to make new identities, to vanish. Not without compromising themselves to Hydra.

_When you're between a rock and a hard place, jumping off a cliff and into the ocean below starts to look like the best third option._

Finally, Grant had really appreciated that piece of advice Victoria had given him. 

It was an insane idea - he'd said as much then...

But it was all the choice they had. And so....

As the wall started to slide open, Grant hurried through into the hidden "lab", a collection of tables, cheap and stolen equipment and computers. It was a far cry from the lab in the playground, the bare stone walls one more sign of how little the four of them had really "lived" in the warehouse that had been their home for the last two months.  
  
"Hydra's here, and they blew up the cars," Grant closed the wall as soon as Kara was inside.

The two scientists had come a long time since their first excursions into the field, and barely showed any visible reaction to the news. 

"Right." Simmons said softly. "How many?"

"Five vans, though maybe the landmines will get a few of them. But they brought attack helicopters, so god knows how many they have in those."

"Well," Fitz pressed a few keys on one of the computers, "they'll have to worry about more than just landmines. At least for a few minutes." He turned away from the computer and picked up a gun, holding it in both hands. His grip was inexpert, but not inexperienced - neither he nor Simmons had bloodless hands now. Grant wished he could mourn that change, but he hadn't had the chance to mourn anything in months. The loss of friends, of mentors, of an idea... the loss of Fitzsimmons's innocence ranked well below those on his list of priorities.

"Weaponized Dwarfs aren't going to hold Hydra off for long," Kara pointed out. "I'd rather not die here if we can help it, so why don't we try turning on that device you two have been working on."

"We - we can't! It's not ready!" Simmons protested, even as she too got ready to fight, putting on a tactical vest and grabbing a gun of her own. "Even if it can sheer open the dimensions and actually create a stable portal, the exotic radiation bombardment would kill us all in seconds! The stabilization bracelets aren't -"

"At this point, Simmons, there's no reason to not try it." Kara interrupted, snapping at the biochemist. "Dying in a matter seconds sounds better than being captured by Hydra. You heard what they told Skye. Faustus Method for all of us, if they get us alive."

"One way or another, that's not going to happen," Fitz said grimly. The sound of gunfire above them put a deadline on their argument. The dwarves were firing and being fired at, but those drones could only last so long. Minutes at best. 

_God help me I actually kind if like those little guys by this point._ They'd saved his life more than once, covered their escape...

And now they were being destroyed for good, just to buy them a little time.

"Well, let's try to avoid the suicide capsules option if we can," Grant finally said. "Simmons, pass out those bracelets and let's hope they work. Fitz, can that device of yours actually be turned on at all?"

"You mean the device that you said was a crazy idea that would probably never work?" Even as he snarked, Fitz was fiddling with a metal box the size of a dog, pressing buttons and fiddling with dials. 

"Fitz," Grant half-growled out, tensing a little as he heard the sound of the gunfire getting closer. 

"What?" The scientists didn't even look up from his adjustments.

"Now is **NOT** the time to say I told you so, alright?" Grant tightened his grip on his gun, accepting a metal bracelet from Simmons that, in theory, should stop them from dying of whatever weird science particles happened when they ripped open the space-time continuum. He slipped it over his wrist, wishing they had any choice but this.

Wishing... they had anything else left.

Wishing...

Even now, even as the end was finally impending, Grant still - as he always was - found himself wishing for the one thing he'd tried to stop wishing for over a year.

_Skye..._

The gunfire stopped abruptly, and Grant saw Kara tense up, readying herself for the eventually breakdown of the wall, for Hydra's assault. This wasn't exactly a secure bunker. 

"Fine, but I reserve the right to say I told you so for the next year when this works," Fitz muttered, finally pressing one final button.

A stream of pulsating blue light emitted from the device, crashing into a section of the stone walls. There was a screeching sound, like steel nails on a chalkboard that had been made of out of tune instruments that set his teeth vibrating for a few moments, and then...

There was a - a hole, in the wall.

There was no other way to describe it. One moment there was a bare, grey, stone wall, and the next there was an opening, the other side showing what looked like a public park at night - trees and bushes, a well maintained dirt path, a park bench.

"Holy shit," Kara's words echoed his thoughts as a sudden pounding built up in his head - despite everything, despite the situation, Grant grunted in pain as a headache like none he'd ever felt ripped through his head. Clutching at his temples, Grant heard everyone else make pained noises as well.

Forcing himself to focus on the situation, Grant pulled his hands away from his head and straightened up, looking at the hole again, the... dimensional rift.

"Well, it works," Grant said after a moment, as the pain subsided to a dull throb, beating at the insides of his skull.

"Barely," Fitz said after a moment to catch his bearings, looking at the readings on the machine. "This is going to need constant calibrations," already he was pressing more buttons on the device. 

The shouts of Hydra soldiers on the other side of the wall reached them - and a familiar voice echoed through, barking indistinct orders. The three of them that had been on the bus all tensed, though each for their own reasons.

"There's no time, Fitz, Simmons, go! We'll cover you," Kara barked the orders, already sweeping microscopes and beakers off a table, preparing to overturn it as makeshift and probably not very effective cover.

"No, you, both of you! Go!" Fitz gestured to the rift. "Simmons, I need your help with these calibrations or the whole thing will collapse!"

"Fitz, now is not the time to be a hero. Go! Go!" Grant moved to grab the engineer by his shirt and just _hurl_ him bodily through the rift, but was stopped short by an iron glare from the scotsman.

"Ward, I'm not playing a hero. This rift is incredibly unstable, and if we stop calibrating it, the whole thing collapses and we're stuck here, all four of us." Even as he spoke he was still fiddling with the device. "We'll be right behind you, but if we go first you won't be able to get through at all!"

"I'm not leaving you two behind-" Grant started, but Kara interrupted him, pushing him towards the portal with a shove right between his shoulder blades.

"More escaping, less arguing!" Staggering forwards, Grant half-fell, half walked through the portal, Kara immediately behind him, right as the wall-door suddenly _shattered_ , raining dust and tiny bits of stone on them

Stumbling through the rift, arriving in the park, Ward found his footing and turned around - in the air in front of the two of them was a hole, just like in the warehouse - the dust cleared and Grant saw her, for the first time in months, her arm held out in front of her, the air shimmering in front of her. She opened her mouth, said something to the two scientists who were pointing guns at her and the array of heavily armed and armored Hydra soldiers behind her, but her words didn't carry through the rift.

"FITZ!" Grant yelled, "SIMMONS!" But they couldn't hear him anymore than he could hear them. The two scientists weren't moving, then -

"NO!" It was a futile scream - even as the words ripped out from his throat, Fitz turned his gun on the device, firing three shots into it before anyone else in the room reacted.

The rift flickered once, twice - 

And vanished, Grant's last sight being Skye sending Fitz and Simmons flying into the walls with a wave of her hand.


	2. This New World

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Disclaimer** : Yeah, no. I don't own.
> 
> Thanks to stargazerdaisy for beta-reading.

The Fine Dimensional Line

By Kylia

Chapter 2: This New World

**September 27th, 2015**

**Motel**

**Dayton, OH**

It was quite fascinating, in a mundane sort of way.

Here she was, in another dimension, and yet, her phone could still connect to cellular data to go onto the web. Actually, for the first time in months she was actually connecting a phone to the data to go online. She hadn't exactly been able to do that when they were on the run from Hydra. Not really all that often anway.

It wasn't as if she was paying for it - no, thanks to one of Fitz's many inventions, they could hack into the cloud just by pressing a button. She didn't pretend to understand how it worked, but it did. And thankfully, dollar bills spent as well here was they did anywhere else.

Kara closed her eyes a moment as she thought of Fitz, thinking back to those moments after they had jumped through the portal. _After you forced Grant through the portal_. They'd just had to stand there and watch as Fitz destroyed the device - Kara understood exactly why he'd done it. Hydra was right there, and there was no way the two scientists could have escaped before that traitorous bitch could have killed them, or had her goons kill them.

_There was nothing you'd have been able to do._ Kara had told herself that repeatedly in the last eight hours, but she still didn't believe it. Grant hadn't taken her telling him that all that well either.

And, in what wasn't her proudest moment, Kara had hit Grant on the back of the head just right to knock him out. He'd been nearly screaming at the spot where the hole in space and time had been, trying to get through. 

Kara suspected he knew he couldn't, but...

Well, he'd known the two scientists for even longer than she had, and had come to think of them as siblings, a little brother and sister.

Kara was still barely registering that they were really gone, out of their reach, forever. As far as she could tell, there was no way back. No way to save them. 

_Or are you just rationalizing because it would be suicidal to go after them?_

Kara quelled the little voice in her head as soon as it asked the question, knowing it was nonsense. As it stood, the only hope the two of them had, in any capacity, was to find the local version of Fitzsimmons and get _them_ \- or some other S.H.I.E.L.D. scientist - to help them make a portal back to where they'd come from.

If it was even possible. _If our Fitzsimmons are even still alive._

However, Kara was rapidly realizing that such was easier said than done. It hadn't taken her long, digging through the news, to find out that S.H.I.E.L.D. had fallen here, too. And in the exact same way that it had in her world. Both Hydra and S.H.I.E.L.D. had been declared outlawed organizations, terrorists in the eyes of the governments of the world, and had been driven underground.

But that was where things started to change. Because S.H.I.E.L.D. still existed. She was 100% certain of that - the Helicarrier that had arrived to help the Avengers save the people of Sokovia was proof enough of that. No world government knew how to build them, and Kara was fairly certain that Tony Stark didn't build that one either.

Plus, Hydra was a lot quieter here, than in their world. There was an attack on the U.N., no doubt set up by Hydra, even though supposedly S.H.I.E.L.D. took the credit for it. A few small-scale actions, and of course the attack on Strucker's base in Sokovia, but really, Hydra seemed to be much lower-key in this reality.

_Which means S.H.I.E.L.D. is still a threat to them._

Which meant that it was out there, and they could find it.

There were a few other differences here and there, that she could find, but the biggest change between this reality and her own was that no one had ever arrested the Ward Family - Christian and Grant's parents had somehow managed to avoid arrest and Christian had even gone on to serve in the Senate.

_Somehow Agent Hand's case against them must have fallen apart._ Kara didn't know the details of what Victoria Hand had done to bring the Wards to justice after she'd gotten Grant released from Juvie, but by the time Grant had graduated from S.H.I.E.L.D. Academy, right alongside Kara, the Wards were in prison for not only what they'd done to Grant, Thomas and Rose, but also for the laundry list of financial crimes and corruptions they'd been neck-deep in.

But in this reality, they'd somehow wormed their way into freedom. _Agent Hand would not have been happy with that._

At least they'd been free until about nearly a year ago, when the Ward Family home out in the Massachusetts countryside had burned down with Christian inside. By Christian himself, apparently. All three had died in the event.

_Couldn't have happened to nicer people._

Which was interesting, but still no more helpful in allowing her to find S.H.I.E.L.D.

She was drawn out of her thoughts and away from her phone by the sound of Grant over on the crappy motel bed. Walking over to him, Grant put a hand over his mouth.  
  
"You've got yourself under control, right? No more shouting at thin air?! The walls in this place are very thin," she gestured around her with her free hand. Grant nodded after a long moment, and Kara pulled away her hand. "I'm not going to apologize for knocking you out, Grant. You were being irrational and you know it."

"I-" Grant started, then he nodded, sitting up. "I think rationality went out the window months ago."

"Well, yeah, probably, but there's no way the two of us can get back to that dimension and rescue Fitzsimmons. Not without help - I mean, I don't know about you, but I can't build one of those devices that rips holes in space and time." Grant nodded slowly, following along with her. "And the two of us can't do it alone anyway," She held up her hand before Grant could say anything, "You know it and I know it. We're good, but we're not _that_ good."

Grant took a deep breath and nodded. "So we need to talk to S.H.I.E.L.D. here. And if it was as simple as walking to the Triskellion, you'd have said so already."

Kara made a noise of confirmation, holding up her phone. "Thanks to more of Fitz's toys, I've been doing some research on this world. A lot of things seem the same - S.H.I.E.L.D. fell, Hydra rose, everyone's been labeled a terrorist. But Sokovia went a hell of a lot better - somehow, a Helicarrier showed up at the last minute and helped the Avengers They all got out alive, and so did most of the civilians. Plus, the President didn't get assassinated by Hydra, and the Paris Metro Attack didn't happen. So S.H.I.E.L.D. is clearly still out there. We just need to find them."

Grant considered for a long moment, "The Playground? That's where it all went wrong. Maybe the Coulson in this dimension wasn't so fucking _stupid_ as to give Skye a second chance, and she couldn't compromise the whole base." The bitter anger in his voice masked what Kara knew was a small ocean's worth of Grant blaming himself for that. He'd been the first one to suggest that Coulson give Skye a second chance. He'd believed Skye, that with Garrett dead, her loyalty to Hydra was gone.

Coulson had made the final call, in the end, but still, Grant blamed himself. 

_Which is more of Grant just being an idiot than him being right. For someone as smart as he is, he can be an idiot_ ** _a lot_**.

"That does seem like the best idea. Even if it goes against the grain to just try walking in through the front door," Kara agreed. "So we head to D.C. and then down into Virginia and hope they believe us? I mean, Hydra does have those nano-masks." 

"You said most things went the same, right? Then we can share things only the local versions of us would know," Grant pointed out. He went on: "I mean... I can't imagine the version of me here told anyone else what mother said to me after the verdict was given. You only know because you were right then next to me." 

Kara shook her head, "Well, your parents and Christian - they didn't go to prison in this universe. They died last year - according to the old news report I found, Senator Christian Ward burned the house down with them in it."

Grant shook his head, "No. No way in hell. Christian wouldn't commit suicide. He's too sure of himself, always sure he'll get out of everything. He was so sure he'd avoid going to prison even to the last second." Grant got off the bed, shaking his head still further. "And Christian wouldn't have the balls to kill anyone himself, if it was murder and he just didn't escape the fire in time." He blinked and turned back to her, "Wait. Did you say _Senator_ Christian Ward? Jesus Christ, there goes any hope I might have had in the American voter."

"Yep. Senator Ward - and apparently he did a big speech a few weeks before that telling the world that his brother Grant was Hydra." Kara shook her head, scoffing again at the very notion of it. "Scored some major political points for being willing to put country before family and all that. They were even talking about a run for President in 2016." At the notion of President Christian Ward, Kara shuddered. 

"Me? Hydra?" Like Kara, Grant scoffed at the very idea, shaking his head.

"So he really did grow into the whole making shit up to cover his ass then." Grant went on. "It had to have been murder then. Probably Hydra, if he was making loud noises about going after them. But that sounds like him - lying, throwing people under the bus..." Grant shook his head. "I'm not going to mourn any version of Christian, but he should be in prison, not dead." He closed his eyes, "We're getting off topic, I'll find something to convince the... local me that I'm really me, not some weird Hydra infiltration attempt or a shapeshifting alien. You'll do the same for you, and then... one way or another, we'll rescue Fitzsimmons - our Fitzsimmons."

"You've had worse plans," Kara nodded, standing up from the chair and slipping her phone into her pocket. "D.C. it is." She considered, "I wonder if I have a dead drop in this Dayton too." The cash and clean I.D. would be helpful, and it was near the Greyhound station, which was their best bet for getting to D.C.

"Only one way to find out."

**September 29th, 2015**

**Metro Station on 12th**

**Washington D.C.**

It was only by sheer chance that they'd seen and recognized Coulson and Hunter. 

After waiting for longer than Kara was entirely happy about, _and_ a bus ride that felt like it took fucking forever, they'd arrived in D.C. It was late, and ideally, Kara had been hoping to find a nice, inconspicuous motel for them to hide out in for the night and go to the Playground refreshed and ready to face the likely inquisition. _Maybe even Koenigs' precious chair._

So it had been as they were walking down the streets of D.C., both of them wearing hoods to keep their faces hidden from any government surveillance, when she saw them, heading down into the subway.

"I think the universe just cut us a break," Kara muttered in Italian, nudging Grant and gesturing towards them.

By training and instinct, Grant immediately responded in the same language, picking up on her intentions, if not her meaning. "What are you," he followed her gaze as the two men vanished down the stairs.

"Holy shit," then, still in Italian, he cursed again, this time nudging her. Right behind the two agents were a half-dozen men and women, one looking to be in her seventies, walking 'inconspicuously' towards the stairs down into the subway. It only took Kara a second to realize why he was pointing them out - the ever so slight bulges of weapons on several of them... 

"Well, saving the local Coulson from a trap seems like a good way to establish our _Bona Fides_ ," Kara pointed out, then she switched from Italian back into English. "Let's take a subway ride."


	3. An Unwanted Rescue

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ** Disclaimer:  ** I probably don't need to include one of these at the start of every chapter I write, but it's a longstanding force of habit from when we kind of did have to include one. So, hey. I don't own AoS, yada yada yada
> 
> Thanks to stargazerdaisy for her beta-reading services

The Fine Dimensional Line

By Kylia

Chapter 3: An Unwanted Rescue

** September 29th, 2015 **

** Subway Car **

** Washington D.C. **

Unsurprisingly, Kara had been right - the half-dozen that had gone down into the subway right behind Coulson and Hunter had gotten onto the same train as those two - and they'd made a careful effort to look and seem quite... casual about it. Still, Grant had trouble believing Coulson wasn't picking up on it. But the two local S.H.I.E.L.D. agents did have their eyes on something else - namely, a professional looking woman with a severe expression, a cup of coffee in her hand and her phone in the other.

"Recognize her?" Grant asked, as they got into the next car over, waiting for the subway to pick up speed. As before, he was speaking in Italian, his voice a low mutter.

"Nope," Kara replied, still in the same language. "But if he's alive, if S.H.I.E.L.D. still exists, who knows what's happening with Hydra and everyone else the agency might be interested in?" Thankfully, the car they'd gotten into was nearly empty, just a few people on the far end - one reading a newspaper, one browsing her phone and the last one listening to music, their head jamming along to whatever beat was coming through their headphones.

"I'll keep an eye out, you listen at the door," Kara muttered, and Grant nodded, getting up and approaching the wall. Activating yet another Fitzsimmons-made app on his phone - and those two had outdone themselves in turning a mostly normal smartphone into all kinds of gadget in the months since the fall of the Playground - Grant pressed the device up against the door and listened in.

"-not an easy person to pin down," Coulson said, his voice casual. 

"Really?" A woman's voice replied - the woman Coulson had been tailing. "Because you were no trouble at all." 

Even if the phone hadn't picked up the sound of all the guns cocking, the woman's tone would have been enough to tell Grant that she was springing her trap. Grant started to reach for his gun, then held himself short. 

_ Give it a minute. Coulson came here to learn something, and until the train stops, they can't take him anywhere... she wants information from him too.  _ This was a trap for capture, not a trap to kill.

Grant put his hands on the door handle, inching the door open every so slightly, peering in through the crack.   
  
The woman was sitting down, entirely unfazed as the half-dozen all leveled guns at Coulson and Hunter. One of them drew up close to the Englishman - and with an exasperated sigh, he handed his own gun to the -  _ agent _ ?

_ Agents... something Federal.  _ Their stance - former FBI, maybe? That one looked like ex-DEA though...

_ Interagency Task Force, or something like it, then. _

Grant ejected the clip from his gun and slipped an ICER clip back in. The only one he'd had on him, as backup...  _ Not much need for these when Hydra is chasing you... _

Then again, Fitzsimmons here could make more, so it was all good anyway.

Grant watched as the agents handcuffed Coulson and Hunter to the railings - Coulson wanted something from this meeting, and it seemed like the woman did too. But Coulson was too calm. He had something up his sleeve.

_ Did he know he was going to be ambushed, or did he just bring a backup plan? _ Either way, Grant had to find out what the hell was going on, and help Coulson and Hunter escape, if need be. He just needed an opening...

"Sir, I have trouble counting without using my fingers, but I think there's more of them than us," Hunter drawled, ignoring the man pointing a gun at him as if the situation were a minor inconvenience. 

"Roger that. Thanks Hunter," Coulson replied blandly, and Grant blinked away a bit of dampness in his eye.  _ God, I can't believe I'm saying this, but I missed Coulson's humor... _ This wasn't the man Grant knew, the one that had been killed, covering their escape from the Playground...

"I would have sent a car," the woman finally said after a long moment, "but then you would have suspected something."

"And what should I call you?" Coulson countered, still sounding more amused than anything else. "Mrs. Kinley, Ms. McBride? So many stage names to choose from." 

_ Federal Agents, a lot of identities - some sort of professional spook. Obviously never rose to S.H.I.E.L.D's attention before though... _

"Call me Rosalind."

"Rosalind," Coulson repeated, "I know that's the name you went by at NASA-"

"At NASA they tend to stick to last names, actually," the woman - Rosalind - interrupted. "The whole east coast flight school mentality is so embedded." Despite himself, Grant had to suppress a slight chuckle. It wasn't even a joke, but this Rosalind woman was right about that much. 

"And yet, you somehow came to it through the DoD."  _ She really wants something from him, if she's letting him keep fishing like this. _ Grant kept watching, still looking for an opening on the agents - if he ICED that one over there, and then - no... the bottleneck of the door -

Keeping one hand on the door, Grant turned his head and gestured towards Kara. Better to have her by the door, reading to move in with him. Kara shot him an annoyed look, gesturing back to the other three people in the car, and Grant shrugged, mouthing 'Well, they don't seem to be paying attention' at her.

Pinching the bridge of her nose, Kara muttered something he didn't catch and walked over stand b him, peeking through the crack in the door as Grant leaned back a little. He kept listening to the phone as is picked up Coulson and Rosalind as they continued to go back and forth, talking about all manner of things, a constant bantering back and forth that almost seemed like flirting.

_ Wait, what? _ The very notion of Coulson flirting was a bizarre one, and yet... it really did feel like he was flirting with this woman. And they just met face to face for the first-

Grant's train of thought was cut off entirely when the woman mentioned Tahiti, complete with 'a magical place'.

There was no way someone with no connection to Hydra or former S.H.I.E.L.D. would know to name drop T.A.H.I.T.I. or the "magical place" line. Grant glanced back through the crack and saw Coulson expression drop into a complete blank for a split second, before he got enough control to return to his unfazed, calm look from just before.

_ He gets that too. _ And unless Grant was reading the man completely wrong, it worried him as well.

Coulson kept up the banter, though; even as one of the agents dropped the news they'd have company soon.

_ Two more teams at the next stop, _ Grant leveled his ICER at the agent in the suit - Coulson and Rosalind continued talking about events he had no familiarity with - people vanishing... dying - Rosalind seemed to think it was Coulson, and Coulson had thought it was her.

_ And now we have a third party. _ Great. It was Raina and Hydra and S.H.I.E.L.D. in regards to the Diviner and the Kree City all over again...

Before any more information could come to light, two phones starting ringing - Coulson's, and Rosalind's. Grant gestured to Kara and she nodded, tensing as he got ready to throw the door open the second Rosalind stepped out of the car door on the far end...

It was the opening Grant had needed, or close enough. He shoved the door open, coming into the car shooting. Once, twice, three times and half the agents were down. Kara was doing the same, and though they ended up duplicating on one of the agents, five of the Feds were down before they knew what was happening. Coulson and Hunter both stared at the two of them, completely taken aback by the sight of them.

The last one started to fire back, but he missed Kara as she dove to the right and then fired again, the ICER round hitting him right below the collarbone.  _ Damn that one'll really hurt! _

Grant stooped down to grab the gun from the first downed agent, checking for handcuff keys when out of the corner of his eye...

Coulson  _ detached _ one of his hands at the wrist, freeing himself from being cuffed to the railing and grabbed a gun from one of the other fallen Agents. 

And then he  _ fired _ at Grant.

** September 29th, 2015 **

** Subway Car **

** Washington D.C. **

Coulson had had a plan. That plan had mostly gone like he'd expected - though he hadn't expected his adversary..., no, hadn't expected  _ Rosalind _ \- to know about Tahiti. 

But the slight shock of that was nothing compared to seeing Grant Ward and Agent 33 break into the subway car and ICE six federal agents in what almost looked like a rescue effort.

Except that this was Grant Ward they were talking about. Ripping off his hand, Coulson dove for one of the unconscious guards and fired the gun practically the second he'd grabbed it.

And missed. 

_ Well shit. _

"Coulson! What the hell!" Ward snapped, straightening back up, pointing his ICER at him.  _ Where did he get one of those? _ Then again, Cybertek had made those Night-Night grenades... Hydra could have reverse engineered ICERs from that.

_ A little less lethal than I'd expect. _

Hunter was busy trying to break out of his handcuffs, and out of the corner of his eye, he saw Agent 33 - no, Palamas, she wasn't an Agent, she'd betrayed every chance she'd been given to come back in.

Coulson's finger twitched on the trigger - but even if he hit Ward, then Palamas would be able to ICE him, and then Hunter and he might as well be good as dead.  _ What does he want?  _ Ward wasn't an idiot, despite how much that would make things simpler for him - no, Ward did things for a reason. Reasons that would never make sense to Coulson, but they made sense to the traitorous psychopath in front of him.

_ Months of not a peep from either of them, from Hydra... _ and now here they were, and Ward looked genuinely surprised that Coulson had shot him - and was still pointing a gun at him.

"Kara, did we somehow end up in that - you know, that thing from Star Trek, where everyone has the opposite personality?"  _ Since when does Grant Ward know anything about Star Trek? _ And why the hell would Ward think he was in the Mirror Universe - why the hell would he be surprised...

_ What in the name of God is going on here? _

"Ward, I don't know what you thought was going to happen," Coulson spat the words out, wishing he'd taken any of the chances he'd had to kill Ward when he'd had the chance - or even, if he'd been in a more forgiving mood, force the man to go through the TAHITI protocol, wipe his memory...

_ Then again, I was wrong that there was a spark of good in him to work with. _

"But after what you two did to Agent Morse, even after I gave you both a chance - after  _ everything _ , you've done, Ward, why the hell would you show up and then be surprised when I shoot at you?!" 

Hunter had absolutely no snarky remarks, and was still trying to get out of the cuffs - the man wasn't quite so stubborn as to do it hard enough to cut his skin, but he was getting there.

Palamas blinked, lowering her pistol a little, "Bobbi's alive? She survived the Fall?  _ How _ ?!" There was -

There was a break in the woman's voice, and if Coulson didn't know better, it sounded like... pain and relief, all bound up together. 

"Kara, we can worry about that  _ after _ we figure out why Coulson has a gun pointed at me, and why Hunter looks like he  _ really _ wants us dead. Like -  _ really _ ."

"Don't play dumb, you bloody idiot!" Hunter snapped, his voice a seething rage - and then Coulson saw Hunter  _ break his thumb _ to get one wrist out of the cuffs, diving for a gun -

Kara fired off three rounds from her ICER in rapid succession - none hit Hunter, but they did force him to take cover at the far end of the car, behind the seats. 

"Hunter, I have no clue what's gotten up your ass, but if you try to point that gun at Grant, I'll fucking do what I threatened to do to a different version of you -  _ I'll cut your balls off _ ." 

Despite himself, despite the gravity of the situation, Coulson winced just at the thought, at the vehemence and sincerity in Kara's voice. And Ward apparently didn't appreciate the thought either, from the grimace on his face.

"Kara, I'm not sure that this is really going to calm the situation down!" Ward lowered his ICER just a little - not actually taking it off Coulson, but an opening gesture.

_ Lower your gun and I'll lower mine.  _ But this was Grant Ward. Coulson was good with a gun - Ward was better. Even if both their guns were holstered, Ward would almost certainly be able to shoot him first.

"Look, Coulson, sir," Ward started hesitantly, "I don't know what the - the versions of us that you know did to piss you off so much, but Kara and me - we're not from around here."

Coulson blinked. "The versions of - what are you talking about?" As he watched Ward, he really  _ looked _ . Ward was a champion liar, but -

_ I almost believe that he has no idea what's going on. _

"We're not -" Ward started, then closed his mouth and started again. "We're not from  _ this reality _ , Coulson. We're from an alternate timeline - one - one where you're dead, Hunter's dead... almost  _ everyone _ is dead. Hydra took the Playground... Fitz, Simmons, Kara and I were the only ones to escape." His voice went unusually soft, cracking a little...

"And Hydra got them before Fitzsimmons could follow us through into  _ this _ reality," Ward finished. "And I am  _ not _ abandoning them to Hydra - the only people I know that might be able to make another device that can take us back to our reality are  _ your _ Fitzsimmons."

Then Ward dropped his gun to the ground completely, ignoring Palamas's incredulous look, "Coulson, I don't know what I - what the  _ other _ me did, but I've been a loyal S.H.I.E.L.D. agent from the day Victoria Hand recruited me. I  _ swear _ ." 

"Different realities? Do you really think we're that  _ stupid _ ?" Hunter demanded, starting to level his gun at Ward again, but Coulson held up his - stump, which didn't work as well as a gesture to make him stop, but it seemed to get the point across.

"Hunter, hold up, you can shoot him in a few minutes-"

"Like  _ hell! _ " Palamas cut in, "Look, Coulson, I really don't think this is the place for us to be having this conversation, but we're telling the truth."

"You're asking me to believe a lot," Coulson shook his head. "You're an expert spy, and I can't trust a word that comes out of your mouth to be sincere, Ward. You betrayed SHIELD, betrayed me, nearly killed Fitzsimmons, tried to kill us all multiple times and  tortured Agent Morse almost to death. And that's just the beginning. And you helped him for a lot of that, Agent 33." He didn't mean to use that label on her - force of habit, he supposed but -

Now it was Kara's turn to lower her gun a little, blinking in surprise, "Agent 33? Coulson, what the - I'm Agent 29. You - you know that, I know that -" Kara cut herself off. "Okay, obviously not, I'm not 29 here but - 33? Why - why would I even be 33?"

There was just something so...  _ petty _ about Palamas's incredulity, the shock written across her features, the... almost outrage at her number  _ not _ being 29...

"Wait, what?!"

_ God help me, I actually believe her. _


	4. Revelations

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Disclaimer:** I don't own Agents of Shield. Insofar as anyone can "own" a fanfic, I do in fact own this fic.
> 
> Thanks are extended to stargazerdaisy for her beta-reading services. If you haven't read any of her stuff, go read it! It's good, high-quality Skyeward content.
> 
> A lot of Coulson POV this time, but essential for the progress of the story. Skye will show up onscreen next chapter, I promise.

The Fine Dimensional Line

By Kylia

Chapter 4: Revelations

**September 29th, 2015**

**Subway Car**

**Washington D.C.**

Coulson really couldn't believe he was entertaining this insanity - the idea that the Grant Ward and Kara Palamas in front of him weren't the murderers he knew, but alternate versions was... well, insane. Crazy.

_But my whole life has been Crazy since Stark got captured by Ten Rings..._ And then a hammer had landed in New Mexico, he'd been shanked by the Asgardian Mussolini, died, come back from the dead and that was just the top of the list. He'd had his _hand_ cut off as a way to stop his whole body from being taken over by weird alien stone magic... stuff.

And that was just what had happened to _him_.

_Is it really so hard to believe that in addition to aliens, Inhumans, strange liquid rocks, and everything else... alternate timelines?_ It really wasn't.

"Okay, so pretend for a second that I believe you both," Coulson said, ignoring Hunter's outburst. "This really isn't the place for this conversation, but until I can be one hundred percent sure you two are who you say you are, I can't exactly trust you." He turned back to the British agent, still taking cover behind the seats.

"Hunter, toss your gun over here. _Now_." The man started to say something angry and biting, but Coulson just repeated his order. " _Now._ " Coulson turned back to Palamas as he heard a gun clatter on the ground nearby. "Now you drop your gun." Palamas looked over to Ward, her expression clearly screaming 'is he serious?' but Ward just shrugged, making no move to grab his own dropped weapon.

"If this blows up in our faces, I'm blaming you, Grant," Kara grumped, dropping her own gun. Coulson gestured for the two to kick their guns over to him, and once he was the only one in the subway car armed - and had all their guns, Coulson activated the beacon. Within mere seconds, the containment pod came crashing down, through the roof of the subway tunnel and the train itself, the train coming to a crashing halt as it registered the damage.

"Get on, now," Coulson gestured with Ward's former ICER to Ward and Palamas. "Then you Hunter. And I will ICE you if you even _think_ about attacking either of them until we have this sorted out."

Coulson dearly wished he could see the look on Rosalind Price's face when she realized he'd escaped, but the pod was already shooting back into the sky as the door to the next car opened.

**September 29th, 2015**

**Zephyr One**

The ride up had been... tense. Hunter had spent the whole time fuming, and Coulson had had to watch him almost as much as he'd kept an eye on Palamas and Ward. They'd clearly been surprised at the pod and its abilities, but they kept their composure, even when shooting into the sky at rapid speeds - even having a quiet, calm conversation in what Coulson thought was Arabic, though he wasn't sure.

When they finally reached Zephyr One, Coulson made sure Hunter got off first, then he turned back to the two, keeping the ICER leveled at them.

"For the moment, I'm going to indulge this idea that you two _aren't_ the Ward and Palamas I know. But if you are anything like the ones I know, then you understand why I can't just take you at face value."

Ward bit his lip and inhaled sharply. "I can understand the issue. But what I don't understand is how any version could have turned against S.H.I.E.L.D. This agency - it saved my life, gave me purpose, meaning, a place in the world I belonged. How could I - the other me, god this is confusing - ever betray it? How could I betray Victoria, after all she did for me?"

"And how the hell am _I_ Hydra?" Palamas added. "I'm not Grant, but I stuck with this agency after the fall for a reason."

Coulson blinked. "Honestly, Palamas, I'm not one hundred percent sure why you turned to Hydra. Or how. There may have been brainwashing involved originally, but even after you were free of it, you helped him," Coulson gestured at Ward, "kidnap and torture Agent Morse, and kill two of my agents. As for you... who is Victoria?"

"Agent Hand - Victoria Hand. My S.O." Ward blinked, and his expression reminded Coulson of the man's incredulity, all the way back to that first day on the bus, at the idea that Coulson wanted to recruit Skye. Complete and utter shock at the very _idea_ of it. Coulson was fairly certain that it had been genuine, even in hindsight. Garrett wouldn't have wanted an unknown element onboard the bus like Skye, risking Ward's mission... and so Ward had been against her inclusion, at the start, and baffled Coulson would suggest it.

Trusting Ward was a mistake Coulson never thought he'd be making again, and yet...

He wanted to believe the man. But...

Ward really was an excellent liar. Coulson couldn't imagine what the man's endgame could be, if this was some elaborate ploy. He was on Zephyr One, yes, but he was outnumbered, unarmed and about to left in a cell that could be jettisoned to the bottom of the ocean if need be.

_And if he's lying, I won't say that idea doesn't sound appealing._ Coulson squashed the thought though - as fitting justice went, it was a perfect fit, but Fitz and Simmons had survived being dropped to the bottom of the ocean, and so too could these two, possibly.

_If I'm going to kill them, it will be quick and with absolute certainty._

"Where is she, by the way? Is she here on this plane, or-" Ward started, but Coulson cut him off, shaking his head.

"Your S.O. here was John Garrett." Ward stiffened, and Coulson could see the light bulb go off behind Ward's eyes. _John was a traitor there too. Interesting._ "Agent Hand is dead-" Ward paled, inhaling sharply, "-and you killed her." Coulson turned around and walked out of the cell, ignoring the sound of Ward dropping to his knees.

_I can't believe I'm actually entertaining all this... but I believe him._

Closing the pod/cell behind him, Coulson wondered why he hadn't included a bar on Zephyr One. The Bus had had one...

_Sweet Jesus, I need a drink._

As he walked away from the pod, another thought occurred to him. The best person to find out if Ward was lying, the person who would be able to best know one way or the other if this was the Grant Ward they knew and loathed, or if he was a different one altogether was...

Well, it was Skye.

_She's going to hate me._

That was it. He was having a bar installed on this plane as soon as possible.

**September 29th, 2015**

**Zephyr One**

"May," Coulson said, approaching the woman. She'd returned to active duty a month ago - things with Andrew apparently hadn't gone all that great, though neither of them were talking - and she'd been avoiding Skye, much to the latter's dismay. "I need you to... well, I need you to guard the prisoners in the Pod."

"It's basically inescapable," May said flatly, not looking up from her tablet. "Isn't that the whole point of it?"

"I don't need you to stop them from escaping... I need you to stop Hunter from killing them." _Yes, but who is going to stop May from killing you?_ She wouldn't kill Ward or Palamas as long as she had orders not to, but she'd surely have some choice words for him even bringing the two onto the plane, containment pod or not.

May looked up from her tablet at him, but as usual, it was hard to read her face. Still, he could pick up the mild confusion. "Hunter's not the most professional of -" she blinked. "No."

"No?"

"There's only two people Hunter would defy orders to kill... and they're both dead. So you can't have them in the pod." May stood up. "Whoever is in that pod, it isn't Ward or Agent 33, whatever they look like.".

"Apparently she goes by Agent 29," Coulson started, then his brain registered what May said before that part. "Wait... they're _dead_!?"

"Yes." May explained, her voice flat again. She brushed past Coulson and strode quickly towards the containment pods. "I killed them both when Hunter and I rescued Bobbi." She paused her walking for a moment, allowing Coulson to catch up to her.

"Well, technically I tricked Ward into killing 33 and then emptied a magazine in the back of his head while he was crouched over her dying body screaming her name," May clarified, as if that made this all make any more sense.

Coulson stepped in front of her, blocking her way to the pod. "He's _dead_. Both of them are _dead_. And you didn't tell me, or anyone else, for _months?!_ I've devoted significant manpower to trying to find those two - I've had Hunter chomping at the bit to go track them down so he can kill them in some machismo-fueled quest for vengeance! They're dead, and you're just telling me _now_? Why didn't you tell me sooner?"

May shook her head, "One, I did tell Andrew. Two, I didn't tell you because if Skye found out I killed him, she'd never forgive me." May put her hand on his shoulder and not entirely gently shoved him out of the way as she resumed her previous pace on her way to the pod, forcing Coulson to catch up once more.

"Why would Skye be angry at you? She hates him - what, you think she'd be angry because you killed him before she could-"

May interrupted him harshly: "Don't be an idiot, Phil. Skye would resent me forever if she found out I killed Ward because part of her still loves him."

"WHAT?!" Coulson couldn't help it, he nearly screamed the word. Apparently today was the day for bombshell revelations from Melinda May. "Are you crazy?!"

"You didn't see how she looked at him that last mission to the Arctic, when she didn't think anyone - him included - was watching," May replied, stopping and turning to face him. "She hates him for everything he did, to her, to Fitz, to Simmons, to the Team... to countless innocent people. And she hates herself for still having feelings for him, despite everything he's done."

May scoffed and shook her head. "I don't understand it, not really. But she loves him - part of her does, anyway. And with him dead, she'll never get any sense of resolution in regards to her feelings for him. And she'll know that. So she'll keep agonizing over those feelings, and keep hating herself, just a little bit, for it." May took a breath.

"And then she'll resent me, because I was the one to kill him and deny her that closure. And that resentment will turn into hate. Once you understand it, it's a fairly simple cycle."

Coulson rubbed his temples as May laid it all out. He could understand her logic - but it all proceeded from a flawed premise. Because there was no way that Melinda was right about Skye still loving Ward.

Sure, she'd had feelings for him - just as he had feelings for her - before the Fall of S.H.I.E.L.D., before he'd been revealed as a traitor. He'd even seen it as a good thing for the two of them, at the time.

And those feelings wouldn't just go away with a snap. But after he'd done to the Team... he'd kidnapped her, delivered her to Hydra - she'd shot him the back four times! She couldn't _possibly_ still have feelings for him.

A memory from months ago rose to the forefront of his mind, unbidden. That office building, where he'd had Ward help him in the shootout with Hydra while they were trying to rescue Skye...

For a second, before Skye had been teleported away...

The two of them had seen each other from opposite ends of the hallway...

The look on Skye's face when she'd seen Ward again for the first time since San Juan...

_Shit._

"Shit." He vocalized his thought and dropped his head into his hands.

"Yes. And if you still doubt it, you can ask her. If you press her about it, I'm pretty sure she'll admit it too... But you've avoided thinking about it, avoiding hinting at or even just straight out asking her about how she felt about Ward because, in part, you're still angry at yourself for not realizing he was a traitor, just like I am for not noticing it. For not noticing a lot, when it came to him."

Melinda took a breath and shook her head once more, all anger gone from here voice. She just sounded... tired. "We're all still dealing with the aftermath of his betrayal... of what it did, the doubts it left us with. But he's dead now, and Skye can't know. If she thinks the _chance_ of closure still exists... she'll be better off."

"And this all brings us back to the fact that the two people you have in the containment pod," May pointed aggressively in the direction of it, "are _not_ Ward and 33, because I disposed of their bodies - even if someone used G.H. 325 or something like it, there isn't enough left of their bodies to bring back from the dead. And I want to know who they are and why they're here, pretending to be those two."

Coulson's head was still reeling, and he couldn't entirely get a grip on these... what Melinda was saying. But she wasn't lying... so-

_Ward and Palamas - they're... they're dead._

"Well... they claim to be from an alternate universe," Coulson said after a long moment. "One where Ward never betrayed S.H.I.E.L.D. Where Victoria _Hand_ was his S.O.... and one where Palamas... I guess she not only has the number 29, instead of 33, but she never got captured by or defected to Hydra... or whatever happened."

"And you believe them?"

"Not _exactly_ ," Coulson equivocated. "But they rescued - or at least thought they were rescuing - Hunter and me from our mystery woman. Her name is Rosalind Price, by the way - or at least that's what she wants me to call her." Coulson shook his head. Despite how important dealing with her and her agency was, it was a distinct back seat to dealing with their prisoners. "They surrendered their weapons, but no, I don't exactly believe them. But given everything that's happened? Everything we've seen? I can't say the possibility is... nonexistent."

"They could also be shapeshifting aliens, people wearing more of those nano-masks or... LMDs," May pointed out. "None of those are outside the realm of possibility either."

Coulson shook his head, "LMDs are a myth, May. They always have been. Some crazy story Fury cooked up one day just to mess with everyone."

"Maybe S.H.I.E.L.D. never had them, but someone else could," May pointed out.

**September 29th, 2015**

**Zephyr One**

Grant Ward felt nauseated. It wasn't enough to make him actually throw up - he had more control than that - but the revelation that not only was Victoria dead, but that a version of him - _any_ version of him - could have killed her...

Intellectually, he understood it wasn't _him_ who had killed her. It wasn't even his Victoria Hand who had been killed - though the one he'd known, the one who had trained him, she was dead too, killed in the fall of the Playground.

But when he'd realized S.H.I.E.L.D. still existed here, in this dimension... he'd had some hope that she'd be... close enough. And he'd assumed that she would be his S.O. in this dimension too.

But no. John Garrett was. Somehow, that fucking bastard must have been the one to find him in Juvie, get him out... and like the John Garrett Ward knew had done to Skye...

_Skye._

"Grant?" Kara asked softly, grabbing his arm and pulling him to his feet, trying to avoid too much roughness. "I'm - I'm sorry."

Grant shook his head, taking a deep breath. "Just... just a shock," he said, his own voice soft. "And... god, Garrett? My S.O.? I can't even imagine... I can't - what kind of monster I must have become under his tutelage..."

"Well, no, you can. And you know it - Skye." Kara pointed out. "But if Garrett was your S.O... what about her?"

"She's probably... god, I don't even know." Gant shook his head. "Everything after Garrett yanked her from the Foster Care system when she was 16 was a fake. I have no clue where her life would have gone without him, but I doubt she'd have joined the team, or gotten involved with S.H.I.E.L.D. at all. Garrett had her deliberately put herself in the agency's path, practically served her up on a platter to Coulson to get him to take her on the team."

"Look at it this way, then," Kara said, forcing a chuckle, "if we end up getting out of this pod, maybe you can go find the local version of Skye and... I dunno, ask her out on a date."

Grant clenched his jaw a moment, wishing he could really appreciate what Kara was trying to do, lighten the mood... but no. Not now. This wasn't the time.

"Even if the Skye here was some kind of saint who dedicated her life to feeding orphans and saving puppies..." Grant shook his head, the very idea of someone so selfish and murderous being a 'saint' unable to form in his head. "Even if... she'd still look exactly like the woman who... who killed Coulson and Trip. Who made Victoria's death possible by bringing all those Hydra soldiers into the Playground." He closed his eyes and shook his head again.

"No," he said with finality.

"Maybe. But you don't _just_ hate her," Kara pointed out. "Grant, I know you better than anyone but Hand ever has."

"It's irrelevant," Grant said, clamping down on his thoughts and shoving them into a box. Kara wasn't wrong, as much as he wished she was. Even after everything..

"What's irrelevant?"

Grant looked up at the sound of yet another voice he hadn't heard in months...

Melinda May, in the flesh, was standing on the other side of the door to the pod, her arms behind her back, her stance stiff... far more stiff than he'd ever seen in the Melinda May he knew. _Just how many things, big and little, are different between our two universes?_

Kara stared silently for a long moment at this universe's version of her S.O. _At least one of us has a still living S.O. in this universe._

Grant took that moment to answer May's question. "Just talking about something exclusive to our universe... the Bus had a traitor too... just... not me. And not someone who would be on it in this universe."

"So that's what you're going with?" May asked tersely.

"It's the truth. What -do you think... you think we're the traitors from this dimension?" Kara asked, finally finding her voice. As far as Grant knew, Kara and May hadn't been as close as he had been with Victoria, but still, most S.O.s developed bonds with their trainees and vice-versa.

"Not anymore," Coulson said, sounding miffed. "Fun fact that I was just let in on - you're dead. The Grant Ward and Kara Palamas I know are dead. Have been for months."

Grant saw Coulson look at him carefully, watching for some sort of reaction to the news of his counterpart's death. But...

_He was a traitor. He killed Victoria. And more._

"If he was a traitor to S.H.I.E.L.D., a murderer - if he really killed this dimension's VIctoria Hand..." Grant shook his head and shrugged. "I'm not going to mourn an alternate version of me that was evil, just because we have the same name and face."

May narrowed her eyes a little as he spoke, then let out a small sigh. "It's not quite that simple, but that's not the matter at hand. They're dead. Which means you two _could_ be telling the truth. But you could also be shapeshifting aliens, using some kind of tech for disguise..."

"Well, that's easy enough to settle," Grant pointed out, letting himself drop into familiar territory. There was a problem, and they needed to solve it. "Take our blood, run our DNA. You have it on file, right?"

"I think," Coulson admitted. "Even if it turns out that you're really who you say you are, not our enemies... well, I've been burned by trusting people that looked a lot like you before... and there's going to be a lot of people at the Playground that aren't going to thrilled to see you... to say the least."

"So I gathered when Hunter was so determined to kill us," Kara snarked, crossing her arms in front of her. "So what's the plan?"

"Assuming your DNA checks out... well, we'll have to keep you under watch for a while." Coulson paused for a long moment. "When we get to the base, you'll be under some kind of house arrest for a bit, until we can-"

"House Arrest?" Grant took a step towards the door, hands tightening into fists. "Coulson, there's no _time_ for that - every second we waste here is a second that the Fitz and Simmons in our dimension are at the mercy of Hydra. We need your Fitzsimmons to make a new version of the-"

"That's going to be a little hard," Coulson interrupted. "Because last time Simmons saw someone who looked like you, she tried to kill him... and right now... Simmons is... gone." Coulson trailed off.

"Gone?" Kara narrowed her eyes. "Not dead?"

"That's... where it gets complicated." May's postured relaxed just a little bit. "Fitz is certainly convinced she isn't. So getting him to do anything but chase down endless leads trying to find her isn't going to work right now anyway," she went on, looking at Kara directly.

"You two will go into House Arrest at the Playground, assuming your DNA checks out. You won't be put in a cell, but... don't leave the rooms we stick you in either, until we get everyone informed with you two being... well, present. Like Coulson said, lots of people aren't going to react well to seeing you. We'll figure everything else out as we can, but it's going to take time. Clear?"

Grant unclenched his hands, releasing a breath but Kara spoke before he could.

"Clear. What happened to Simmons?"


	5. Looking Toward the Skye

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Disclaimer:** I don't own it, etc, etc. I own a broken laptop, an uncooperative chromebook and a bunch of books. Feel free to sue me for a piece of that.
> 
> Thanks to Stargazerdaisy for her beta-reading services on this chapter.
> 
> Last chapter, Coulson referred to Skye as 'Skye', because, well, that's a whole thing for him in the show that he makes that mistake several times early on. May called her 'Skye' because, well, to be honest, I completely forgot about the name change, which I've never been a fan of. But we can also justify it in universe because May has been away from S.H.I.E.L.D. for several months and been avoiding Skye since.
> 
> However, since this is meant to be a divergence AU that diverges after Skye changes her name to Daisy, in scenes from her POV, and from most other characters POVs, she's going to be Daisy, my opinion of the name change notwithstanding. Grant and Kara, at least for the moment, will keep calling her Skye, since that's what they're used to, but
> 
> Going forward, in the long run, however, 'Skye' will end up referring to the Skye that was left behind in Ward and Kara's universe, the one that betrayed the team, and Daisy will be the Skye/Daisy from the canon universe.

The Fine Dimensional Line

By Kylia

Chapter 5: Looking Toward the Skye

**October 1st, 2015**

**The Playground**

"How are you feeling?" Daisy looked over at Coulson as he asked the question when she entered his office. Simmons had been cleared to not need Quarantine, and Daisy had been hoping that she could at least... visit her friend for a few minutes, as much she could take, anyway, before going off on whatever else came up. Because nothing ever seemed to stop, now, when it came to S.H.I.E.L.D.; one crisis after another.

"As good as ever," Daisy confirmed. "I was hoping Simmons is up for a visitor-"

"That's going to have to wait," Coulson interrupted, standing up and walking over to her.

"What for?"

"It'll be better if I show you," Coulson replied, obviously hiding something. "I'm going to need you to hand over your gun, and that knife in your boot, and promise me you won't use your powers." Whatever it was D.C. was going to show her, he seemed to think she would get violent, and his tone brooked _no_ argument.

Daisy blinked, looking at him pointedly, but he didn't elaborate. Sighing, she unholstered her pistol, handed it over and knelt down to remove the knife, handing that to Coulson too. "I promise I won't use my powers, now what is this about?"

"Follow me." Coulson led her down and through the central area of the base, out towards the east dormitory wing. There were a lot of empty rooms in this section - S.H.I.E.L.D. was still chronically understaffed and that meant there was plenty of room at just about every base. Finally, they reached a room, where May was standing outside, arms crossed in front of her chest.

Daisy expected May to just duck away and avoid eye-contact, like she'd been doing for some reason ever since she came back, but instead, May met her eyes.

"This is going to be... surprising," May said carefully, "But watch your reactions. Stay in control."

"What is going on?!" Daisy demanded. "Why are you two being so cagey, what's on the other side of that door, and why, May, have you been giving me the cold shoulder for the last month?"

"You didn't do anything," May said, sounding about as reassuring as she was capable of managing. "As for why we're being cagey..." May trailed off, then, shaking her head, she turned and opened the door.

Daisy looked into the doorway and on the other side was a pretty standard room for the Playground - though this one was situated for two people - two beds, two small dressers, two chairs for people to sit in. More or less like hers, though, minus the personal touches of someone who had been living in the room for over a year.

But it wasn't the contents of the room that was the issue. It was the occupants. Two occupants. One, a woman with olive skin and dark hair that Daisy recognized - Agent 33, Kara Palamas, that bitch who had helped Ward kidnap and torture Bobbi...

And another, even more familiar person. A face that haunted her dreams and nightmares, and even haunted her when she was awake sometimes, though not as often in the last few months.

"Ward?! What the fuck?" Instinctively Daisy reached for her gun, anger boiling in her, but it was only when her hand snatched at empty air at that she realized Coulson had...

_Fuck._

Ward for his part, looked as angry as she felt. He let out a snarl, the likes of which she'd never heard from him before, jumping up from his chair.

"Skye!?" Daisy had once loved hearing him say her name, for a brief window, back when that had been her name, back before... everything. She'd heard him say her name with... longing, exasperation, desperation...anger even. But not...

Not hate. Grant Ward's evoice and eyes were full of hate...

Hate she recognized.

Hate she'd felt, for _him_ , that day on the plane, when she'd revealed she knew what he was, when he'd cuffed her to the staircase and tried to say 'nothing personal' as if that excused everything he'd done, everything he was doing. It had been a blinding, furious moment of hate, at how the guy she'd loved had ruined _everything_.

_Not just 'loved'_. Daisy clamped down on that annoying little voice in her head, giving in to her anger. She opened her mouth, about to demand what the hell this was about, about to ignore her promise to not use her powers-

"Coulson," Ward said, his voice cutting into the air like frozen, broken glass. "What the _hell_ is she doing here?" Daisy saw 33 - Kara - rise to her own feet and actually grab Ward's arm, ready to restrain him. _Ward wouldn't hurt me, not physically_.

She'd believed that for a long time, even when Ward had kidnapped her from the Bus and taken her to San Juan. It had been a constant she'd believed. Known to be true. In his own twisted, obsessed way, Ward would never hurt her.

For the first time since she'd seen Koenig's corpse...

She actually thought that Grant Ward might actually hurt her. Or at least seriously try to. It was a thought that was difficult to reconcile with everything she knew about the bastard in front of her.

Daisy felt May grip her shoulder tightly, apparently also trying to restrain her. The older woman's grip actually kind of hurt, but Daisy clenched her jaw as Coulson tried to answer Ward's question.

"This is Skye- Daisy," Coulson corrected himself immediately. "So you do know her. I was wondering if you two ever met in your universe."

_Your universe?_ What the hell was Coulson talking about?

"Oh yeah, we've met," Ward's tone seemed like it would be able to cut right through vibranium. "In our universe, Skye's a traitor, Coulson. She tried to sell us all out to Hydra. Twice. She _killed_ you. Killed Trip. Put Simmons into a coma for months, nearly broke Fitz's neck, murdered- dozens of S.H.I.E.L.D. Agents."

Before Daisy could process what Ward was saying - _Kill Coulson? Trip? Fitz was the one who ended up in a -_

"That's your universe, Ward," Coulson pointed out stiffly. "In _this_ universe, Daisy is a loyal S.H.I.E.L.D. agent, and the you here was her S.O."

Daisy was, even still now, a nerd. She'd watched Star Trek and Doctor Who and even Sliders. She'd read plenty of comic books.

_An alternate universe version of Grant Ward._ It seemed impossible, but then, half a year ago, having powers would have seemed impossible to her. Four years ago, aliens had seemed to be just urban legend and conspiracy theories.

But how could they know? Ward was a master liar, and if she hadn't found Koenig's body, she'd have never realized what he was, have never realized that her S.O. was a monster, a traitor, an evil bastard. He had to be faking-

_No._

No one could fake that much hate. And the Grant Ward she'd known... he'd never have hate for her like that. This...

This wasn't the Grant Ward she knew.

The air was thick, and Ward was glaring at her, looking like he certainly wanted looks to eviscerate. Daisy was meeting his glare, trying to control herself as she realized what this meant...

Everyone was silent for a long moment, until Kara Palamas burst into laughter. No, giggles. A fit of giggles that had her letting go of Grant's arm, doubling over, resting her hands on her knees. Between the giggles she tried to suck in breaths of air, but it wasn't working very well. But still she kept going for nearly a minute before finally May spoke again.

"Something you'd like to share with the rest of us, Agent Palamas?"

**October 1st, 2015**

**The Playground**

_The multiverse has a cruel, cruel sense of humor._ Or maybe an excellent one, depending on how you looked at it. Kara was trying to contain her giggling - she _hated_ giggling to this degree - but it was proving easier said than done.

But finally, after a minute, as May demanded to know what was so funny, Kara managed to take a successful deep breath, but she couldn't stop the amused smile on her face as she straightened up.

"Sorry," Kara said, clearing her throat. "Just - I guess there are some constants across dimensions. In our universe... Grant was her S.O. Not that she actually _needed_ an S.O., because Garrett trained her, but she certainly did a good job faking the role of rookie, from what I heard."

"Garrett?" Daisy asked, blinking. "I was - so... you guys are from the Mirror Universe, where I'm evil? Where I was... how the- That's impossible! I'm not a murderer!"

"I could say the same thing about Grant, Skye," Kara pointed out, stepping forward a bit, standing between her and Grant. "Or me. I mean, from my perspective, this is the Mirror Universe, because I'm evil here." Now it made sense why Coulson and May had demanded they not let _anyone_ know that the local versions of themselves were dead.

"I'm gonna guess that the local Ward fell in love with you, and you fell for him too-" Kara knew she shouldn't be amused by it all, but it was just... it was just so silly, that the apparent key difference in these two universes was that Grant was the traitor here, and Skye there. _And traitor Skye was infinitely more destructive. I guess Coulson here never had the same soft spot for him that he did for Skye._

And frankly, after everything that had happened since the fall of S.H.I.E.L.D., Kara really needed an excuse to laugh at the pointless absurdity of _something_.

"Kara," Grant cut in. "Stop talking. Now"

"That sounds like a good idea," Skye said stiffly. "And my name is Daisy."

_I'll take that as a confirmation._ "But your name _was_ Skye?"

Skye - Daisy - nodded. "It was, yeah. The name I gave myself. My real name - the name I was born with - is Daisy. Daisy Johnson."

"Daisy Johnson?" Grant actually smiled vindictively at that. "The Skye I know would hate to find out that's her real name. She _hates_ flowers. I'd love to see the look on her face when she finds that out." The smile isn't just vindictive, but cruel as well. For all that Kara knew Grant still loved Skye, Grant also hated her. A lot. _And this Skye hates the Grant Ward she knows. Knew._

_And I still don't know if Grant would be able to kill her, if he really had the chance._ Grant insisted he'd be able to do his duty, if it came to that, but she doubted it. And she really didn't _want_ Grant to be able to kill his Skye. Because that would mean he'd be able to kill someone he loved, however complicated it all was.

It was cliche and all star-wars Jedi-y, but hate was a toxic thing, and when it came to Skye, Grant's hate went off every chart. But then, so did everything else.

_Is this.... What, some sort of weird cross-dimensional forever epic connection thing?. In every universe, in every dimension, Skye - or Daisy or whatever she calls herself - and Grant Ward are going to be entwined in some sort of enemies or lovers or both, like some cliche romance novel?_ Somehow, Kara suspected that was the case. That if they visited other universes, they'd all find that every version of Skye and every version of Grant were connected in some way, and that it was the most powerful connection, however it worked, that each of them had.

_Just when I thought they couldn't get more cliche._

"I don't care what the I - the other me, thinks about my name. Why are you guys even here- _how_ are you guys even here?"

"Short version?" Grant asked darkly, then went on, "You tricked us into thinking you were... I don't know, redeemed or not actually an evil bitch, we let you out, thought we were taking precautions, but they weren't enough. You got a message out to Hydra, told them where the Playground was, compromised the defenses..."

Grant stepped around Kara, glaring at Sk-Daisy coldly.

"They killed nearly everyone. Skye killed Coulson. Killed Trip. Mack, May, Bobbi..." Grant closed his eyes for a moment, his voice a little softer. "Victoria. Agent Hand. They all died in the attack, because of _you_." Kara could see Daisy paling a little at the litany of death her alternate had caused.

"We escaped," Kara cut in grabbing Grant and pulling him back. She wasn't really happy about seeing the woman who had broken the back of S.H.I.E.L.D. Skye was the reason her May had died. The reason they'd been on the run for months... Lots of her friends were dead because of what Skye did, but it wasn't...

It wasn't quite as _visceral_ for her as it was for Grant.

"Grant, Fitz, Simmons and I... we got away. Ran from safehouse to safehouse, trying to find some way to hide for good. Our Fitzsimmons developed a device." Kara took a breath. "I don't remember what they called it - something complicated and scicency. But it was designed to rip holes between universes... the idea was we could escape to another dimension. _Any_ dimension would have been better. And this one is, even if I'm d- evil here." Kara corrected herself before she could say it. She didn't really see the point of lying to this Skye - Daisy - since sooner or later she'd learn the truth, but...

_I'd really rather not have this May angry at me._

This May was colder, stiffer than the May she knew, but... well, it would be nice if she was able to... be friends with her, eventually.

"Fitz and Simmons had to stay behind to the last second, to make sure the device was properly calibrated. Grant and I went through first... but Hydra - _you_ came in before they could come through the portal. Fitz shot the device, blowing it up before Hydra could get their hands on it... the last thing we say was our Skye using her powers to throw Fitzsimmons against the wall."

"So we're here, and our Fitzsimmons are prisoners of Hydra. We're not going to leave them behind."

"So you want our Fitzsimmons to make another device so you can go back to the place you came from?" Daisy nodded, obviously following along with where she was going.

"Would you leave them behind to be Hydra's prisoners?"

"Of course not," Daisy agreed. "And now that Simmons is back-"

"She is?" Grant said, and finally his voice was something other than angry. "Where was she? Why was she-"

"She was on another planet. For months. She's... still recovering." Coulson said, finally speaking. "We're gonna have to ease everyone into the fact that you two are here. Especially you Ward. You said you guys had a picture of the device?"

"Yeah," Grant pulled out his phone, holding it out. Coulson walked into the room and took it. "Plus there's a few recordings of them talking about it. I don't know how useful it will be, but..."

"I'll see what our Fitz can make of it," Coulson nodded. "I can't promise immediate results. There's... a lot going on right now."

"Once everyone knows we're here... at least until that device is ready, I'm happy to help, however I can. Whatever dimension I'm in, I'm a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent. Grant too." At Kara's words, Grant nodded, and she watched Coulson consider the offer. If the local Grant Ward was even _half_ as effective as the Grant Ward she knew, it had to be a tempting offer.

"Coulson, are you seriously considering-" Daisy started to protest, but Coulson interrupted her.

"We're overwhelmed and undermanned. I'm not proposing that you work with Ward, but I'm quite confident we can find work for the both of them." Coulson nodded. "And now I have to figure out how to drop this bombshell on everyone else. So, if there's nothing else?"

Kara shook her head. Nothing else for Coulson. After Grant said nothing, Coulson turned and started to walk away. After sending a looking of badly disguised longing Grant's way, Daisy turned as well, following after the Director.

Kara looked over at May. "May... could I have a word with you, in private?"

May said nothing for a long moment, then nodded, gesturing for Kara to step out of the room. She did so and then May closed the door - and then theywalked a short distance away from the door.

"What did you want?"

Kara stuck her hands into her pockets, feeling like she was a rookie just out of the Academy being reprimanded for screwing up some basic task. Taking a breath, Kara asked the question she'd wanted to ask since she'd realized May was alive here. One of them, anyway.

"So... before... I went... evil. Did we - did we know each other? In this universe?"

May shook her head. "Not really. We passed each other in the halls a few times, said hi once or twice, that's about it." She paused, her brow furrowing as if she was considering her next words very carefully, but then: "And it's more complicated than you just 'went evil'. There was brainwashing involved, and... S.H.I.E.L.D. failed you. It's that simple. Your death was preventable... it didn't _have_ to happen."

May shook her head and let her arms fall by her sides. "No, at that moment, it did. Whatever might have been, you were a threat to S.H.I.E.L.D. It was the best way to make sure I could take out Ward, who was a threat... a threat to us all. Daisy most of all. But... before. There were things we could have done to stop it from having to come to that."  


"If I was the enemy, I was the enemy," Kara said, shrugging. "I'm not her, I'm not upset with you for doing your job and killing an enemy. Grant feels the same way."

"Like I said, it's more complicated than that. You were captured a few months after the Fall - your safehouse was compromised, and Hydra got to you before anyone else could. But we didn't realize that's what had happened, at first."

"You'd thought I'd turned."

"Well, the only one at the Playground at the time who knew you at all was Ward, and given that he was sitting in a cell at the time, we didn't have anyone to say otherwise." May explained. "A short time later, you tried to infiltrate the team - you ambushed me, used a nano-mask to look like me and tried to drop the cloak on the Bus so Hydra could blow the plane." For the first time since Kara had seen her in this dimension, May smiled just a little.

"Coilson picked up on something... suggested coffee. You accepted."

Kara scoffed, "Well, I definitely never knew you then." She had made the mistake of bringing her May coffee once. Once.

"We fought again, and while you were still wearing the mask, I jammed active power cables into your face. You were good, and they were the best weapon to hand." Kara winced at the thought of what that could do - especially if she was wearing such a delicate and complex machine on her face at the same time. "I... I'm not sure why I didn't think of taking you prisoner. I guess I thought you were dead, or... close enough. But you weren't. And even when we realized you'd been brainwashed, we never did anything about it... and you were stuck with your mask damaged, frozen on my face... but only half of it. I wasn't thrilled about that."

"I can imagine. But... why didn't you try to get me, once you realized I hadn't defected?" Kara could think of all kinds of explanations - sometimes it just wasn't worth the risk... for one agent.

"I don't know. We had openings... chances we could have taken. We were... distracted, I think. There was... a lot going on. But it's not a good excuse. It all came to a head in San Juan. Ward kidnapped Daisy, pretending to be working for Hydra, but he was playing some other game. Dr. Whitehall, the man who brainwashed you, was killed, and - I guess when you lost the brainwashing imprinting, you lost all your memories. You and Ward escaped San Juan, and the next time we saw you, you two had fixed the mask and you were using it to make your face at least look like what it had before I electrocuted you."

Kara rocked back on her heels a little. May was obviously just scratching the surface, summarizing events, but Kara could follow.

_With no memories, no sense of who I was... I would have been impressionable. And a Grant Ward guided by a monster like Garrett would be able to use that very well._

"You pretended to come back in, while Coulson forced Ward to help us, using his insider Hydra knowledge. But it was all a scheme to kidnap and torture Bobbi."

_See, and that..._

Kara couldn't believe so much had changed that she and Bobbi hadn't been friends at the Academy, and afterwards. So much before the Fall was still similar, but... maybe that had been different too. Or maybe it was the local, evil version of Grant.

"I take it we were friends, in your universe?"

"You were my S.O., actually." Kara said, her voice softening. "You were a hard-ass, but... what good S.O. isn't? Who did you end up with as your trainee?"

"People in Admin don't serve as S.O.s," May answered, and Kara blinked.

"You went Admin full time, before the fall?" She couldn't see May sitting behind a desk full time. "That - I can't see it. I mean, I know you went on desk duty for a while, after you had your daughter but-" Kara trailed off as she suddenly remembered a mission in Bahrain May had been on.

Her S.O. had told her about it once, when she'd gotten a little too drunk while undercover - after the op, when the bad guys had been taken away by local law enforcement, May had procured _another_ bottle of scotch and proceeded to tell her all about how she earned the nickname 'The Cavalry'.

Right before she'd taken two years off active duty to have her daughter and work desk duty during Julia's first year, May had gone to a mission on Bahrain. A gifted had somehow taken control of a whole bunch of people, including S.H.I.E.L.D. agents. Some kind of mind control. They'd all thought it was the mother.

It had been the nine year old girl, instead. May had almost killed her, but had managed to incapacitate the girl instead and hand her over to the Fridge. The girl had been seriously messed up in the head, her power had screwed with her ability to form natural human relationships and attachments... S.H.I.E.L.D. therapists had tried to help her, but no avail, from what Kara had found out when she'd looked into it.

_"I was so close to killing her... but I thought about the daughter Andrew and I were gonna have, and... there had to be a better way... I figured one out._ "

"You never had her here, did you? You killed that little girl in Bahrain..." May looked at her with what looked - and felt like a combination of a death glare and... intense pain and regret left Kara feeling... bad, about reminding this version of May of what had to have been a... brutal experience.

"I'm sorry - I didn't mean to..."

May shook her head. "You didn't know."

Unsure if she was about to dig a deeper hole for herself or not, Kara went on for a moment: "I don't know if means anything. but in my dimension... Andrew and Julia are fine... You convinced him to turn State's evidence against S.H.I.E.L.D. after the fall, so he could go into WitSec with your daughter. Hydra was still looking for him as recently as a few weeks ago..." Kara cleared her throat.  
  
"I... I'm going to go back to the... house arrest room," she said, unsure how to feel. Like a horrible person... embarrassed... awkward. She started to turn, and May asked her a question that had her draw up short for a moment.

"Do you drink scotch?"

Kara turned her head back, a little confused by the question. "Yeah. It's my preferred poison. You got me onto it, actually."

"I have a twelve year Lagavulin. Maybe we can break it out some time, talk." May's expression was, as was common to every version of the woman, it seemed, unreadable.

Kara allowed herself a slight smile though. "I'd like that."


	6. Awkward

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ** Disclaimer: ** As per usual, I don't own AoS. Hasn't changed, won't change... though I suppose at the rate the ratings are plummeting, the value of the show might drop enough that someday someone will be able to buy it with pocket change. 
> 
> A lot of talking and introspection here, but I did say this was slow-burn and angst. Next chapter though we'll finally have something resembling a plot as we start following along with the show again. I promise.
> 
> I'll freely admit that when it comes to Mack's voice and characterization, I'm far from an expert - if you think I got things wrong, please, as always, feel free to (politely) let me know in a review/comment/message, either on the fic or on my tumblr.
> 
> Thanks to Stargazerdaisy for beta-reading

The Fine Dimensional Line

By Kylia

Chapter 6: Awkward

**October 2nd, 2015**

**The Playground**

Daisy wasn't really one for just... sitting and thinking. Even as Mary Sue Poots, at St. Agnes, she'd always prefered to be doing... _something._ Anything. As Skye the Hacktivist, she'd always been up to something - engaging in some plan or project, figuring out how she could do what she needed to do or wanted to do next, figuring out _what_ she needed or wanted to do next...

As Skye the S.H.I.E.L.D. Agent in training, she'd always had something to do - training with Ward, or hanging with Fitzsimmons, or some task from Coulson. As Skye, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D., she'd never really had much _time_ to really sit and reflect, except a few moments here and there - or when she'd been exiled to that cabin while she learned how to control her powers.

And as Daisy Johnson...

_Well, I sure as hell have been too busy to sit and think._

But right now.

Right now she was sitting here on the couch in the common room, not even using her downtime to unwind with a video game. She was just...

Thinking.

"So, Tremors, I don't think I have to try hard to figure out what you're thinking about," Mack said, sitting down on the couch next to her.

"Coulson told you?" Daisy let out a long breath.

"He's telling everyone. I guess he figured he'd let me know a bit before everyone else. Since you're my partner, and I never met the..." Mack furrowed his brow, searching for the right word.

"The local version of Ward?" Daisy supplied, and Mack nodded. "And you... believe all this? It's a pretty crazy story."

"Crazier than Inhumans and magic rocks that turn liquid and take people to other planets? Crazier than aliens pretending to be Norse Gods and portals opening in New York City?" Mack rolled his eyes. "At this point, not sure anything would surprise me. If someone walked through the front door and told me the Zombie Apocalypse was starting, I'd just grab a shotgun and an axe get to work."

Daisy smiled just a touch. "You know, I'm sure Fitz could find a way to design a Shotgun-Axe combination for you, if you really wanted him to."

"Turbo probably could, but he's busy with Simmons coming back... I'll ask him about it later. Besides, I'm here for you. Can't be easy, the idea of... another Ward."

Daisy shook her head, "The idea of there being another Ward, one that's not evil? That I don't hate?" She looked past Mack, not at anything in particular, just staring. She let out another breath she didn't realize she was holding, then went on. "Part of me almost likes the idea." Mack raised an eyebrow, and Daisy shrugged, "There's a lot you don't - I mean, it's not like I've told you much about him, and I know he's a sore subject with just about everyone."

"You stick around long enough, you pick up a few things," Mack pointed out. "He was your S.O. Your friend. Almost more."

Daisy shook her head. "Nothing actually _happened_ , apart from a few kisses..." _really really_ ** _good_** _kisses..._ "But we weren't 'almost'. I loved him," _love him_ , "and... whatever else he is - murderer, sociopath, fucking evil bastard who should rot in hell… - he loved me. Shooting him the back four times probably fixed that, but..."

"Ward... local Ward... I don't really think he ever actually _lied_ to me." She scoffed at her own words, at the expression on Mack's face. "I know how that sounds, but... he didn't, really. Not about the important stuff. He just..." She shook her head. "He hid a lot of other just as important stuff, about himself, who he was, what he was really up to." Daisy sighed, "The first few months after... the Fall, after we came here to the Playground. I would... daydream, sometimes, about somehow being able to just... have the guy I thought I did know back. The hardass S.O., who I could sometimes make smile, who I played board games with, and who was this loyal,  hard and closed off but... good guy. He was real, just... not everything."

"Which is why part of you likes it, to have a version of him around that isn't evil, didn't do all the things he did - betray you, kill Eric Koenig, nearly kill Fitz and Simmons... kidnap Bobbi and try to kill Hunter and all that. Felt like having that guy back?"

"Well, it would... in theory. But this Ward... he _hates_ me. And even if he didn't... He's not really the Ward I knew, is he? Different life... and he looks and sounds and movies exactly like the guy who betrayed me, who hurt everyone..." Besides, there was Lincoln. She hadn't expected to have feelings for him, and they were only tentative, an idea in the abstract as much as something real, but they were... They were still real. Something she wanted to try to build on, explore. _If we could just get Lincoln to stop running, to come in and help us._

The thought had occurred to her more than once, despite her efforts to drive off such errant and idiotic ideas, of the thought, the insane _wish_ that she could try to start something with this Ward. _He hates me... he's not the guy I know._ But he was close.  There was so much of the Ward she knew in that man she'd seen yesterday.

And so much hate.

"Hates you? He doesn't know you, Tremors. He hates the other you," Mack pointed out.

"Coulson told you about that?" Daisy chuckled hollowly. "It almost makes sense - he's from a bizarro world where he's not evil, so why shouldn't this seem like the bizarro world to him, where I'm not evil?" She thought back to all the comic books she's read and sci-fi shows and movies she's seen.  Narratively, it made sense. "The other me... Skye, still, apparently. She was everything Ward was here... more, even."

"I look like her... sound like her... move like her... if it's hard for me to really separate the two Wards, hard for him to separate the two... me-s..." Daisy shook her head. "I just... I believed him, when he listed off all the things the other me did. She killed Coulson and Trip and... She's the reason the other you died, the reason May and Morse and a ton of others - died, over there. She betrayed his team... Apparently _Simmons_ was the one to end up in a coma, and it was because of her."

"But... if she could do it... I mean... she's me... just with different things happening to her. Does that mean... I could have been just like her, if things had gone differently for me? That someday I could be the kind of monster she apparently is?"

"You're talking nature versus nurture," Mack mused, and Daisy nodded. Mack looked around a little before looking her in the eye. "You're not her though... The way I figure it, anyone has it in them, to do anything." Mack let out a sigh of his own. "You know, I never killed anyone, before the day S.H.I.E.L.D. fell, when Hydra tried to take the Iliad. They were bad guys, hurting my friends, my crewmates. Still... it took a bit to come to terms with, killing someone, taking a life."

"Not the same thing, no," Mack admitted, "but still. Anyone can be anything - pretty sure most people don't wake up one day and decide to be evil, you know?" He shook his head, "So yeah, things went different in your life, you probably could have done some pretty bad stuff. But they didn't... you aren't evil - you're a hero, Daisy. You made the choices you made to get here, and you've got Coulson, May, Fitz, Simmons back now, me... Worrying about what might've been is gonna drive you crazy, you know that right?"

"I've been at it on and off for nearly two years and I'm not crazy yet," Daisy replied with a shrug. "I hope you're right. I believe you're right. I mean... I know I wouldn't go off and do evil things now, but... like you said, no one wakes up one day and says 'I'm gonna be evil'. The potential is there..."

"The potential is there in everyone. Even Coulson - that's exactly what the Board thought about him, remember?" Daisy resisted the urge to roll her eyes at the mention of 'Real S.H.I.E.L.D.’ and everything they'd been up to and believed. "We were wrong, but we knew - his track record aside - that he could still be a bad guy. Worried about it. I mean, let me put it like this - every Inhuman _can_ do a lot of damage with their power, right?"

"Most of them, yeah..." Daisy admitted.

"You have the potential to take down a building, if you focused on it. Could kill a lot of people with it - Sparkplug can kill people with a touch if he wanted, I'm betting. But he doesn't. You don't. You shouldn't be locked up by this... ATCU for what you _could_ do, right?"

"Of course not!" Daisy protested, then she realized his point and chuckled a little, this time not quite as hollowly. "I see what you're saying."

"Good." He got up and walked over to the gaming console connected to the TV. "What do you say we turn this on, have some fun in the downtime before Coulson sends off on another mission?"

Daisy laughed, "Personally, I'd _love_ another mission right now, but sure."

**October 2nd, 2015**

**The Playground**

Grant looked up at the sound of someone knocking on the door. Despite how much he wanted - _needed_ to be doing something, there wasn't anything he _could_ do. He couldn't force Fitzsimmons to build the device that would take Kara and him back to their dimension. And he couldn't even do anything to help _this_ S.H.I.E.L.D. until Coulson prepared the base for them being alive.

_But not Trip._ _Not Victoria._ Both dead in both realities.

With nothing else to do, Grant had asked for a book. He'd been given several, including _Matterhorn_ , which his late, unlamented local counterpart had apparently owned. His taste in fiction left a lot to be desired.

Grant looked over at Kara, who was sitting on her bed and wasn't looking up from her phone. "You're closer to the door," she pointed out, accurately, and Grant nodded. He closed the book - not bothering to save his place - and got up from the chair, walking over to the door.

The familiar face on the other side of it had Grant catching his breath for a moment. Fitz. Alive and well. Not his Fitz but... it was a Fitz.

But he was also another visual example of just how different things were, between the two dimensions. His Fitz had been hardened by circumstances, had had to kill, to make more and better ways to fight the Hydra agents that came after them, how to adapt and steal Hydra tech and use it against - even Splinter Bombs had been an acceptable weapon, if they were what were to hand.

But he still looked so much like the Fitz who had been on the Bus.

This Fitz... Ward could tell just by a look in the man's eyes that he _was_ hardened, that he had taken life... but this Fitz also _looked_ different. He carried himself differently, and the fact that he wasn't clean shaven was a small, but meaningful display.

"You look just like him." Fitz was the one who spoke first. "This universe's Ward, I mean."

"That would make sense. You look a lot like my Fitz... Though he shaves," Grant pointed out.

Fitz's hand went to his stubble for a moment, then he shrugged.  "Can I come in?"

"Yeah, of course." Grant stepped aside, letting Fitz into the room. Kara had put her phone down and stood up at the sound of Fitz's voice. The Scotsman walked into the room, looking around for a moment, before turning back to Grant. He seemed... so blase, about everything. Not relaxed, exactly, but not tense. "You're... reacting to seeing me better than I thought you'd be, given..."

"Given that your counterpart here nearly killed me and betrayed S.H.I.E.L.D. and... everything else he did?" Grant nodded. Fitz shrugged. "I can't hold that against you. You're not him. Just like this Agent Palamas didn't hold a knife to my throat."

Kara cleared her throat. "The other me did?" Fitz nodded. Kara shook her head. "Wild. Well, for what it's worth, sorry about that."

"Not sure if interdimensional clones really can apologize for their counterparts..." Fitz let out a breath. "Honestly, that should feel weirder to say, but given what's just happened recently... not so much."

Grant nodded. "Yeah... I'd heard you were on a different planet. How... how is Simmons doing?"

"Still... getting used to everything again," Fitz said softly. "Coulson decided to delay telling her about... about you, just for another day or two..." He shook his head. "I'm not sure she needs to be coddled quite that much, but..."

"She spent weeks, months, abandoned on an alien planet. Anyone needs some time to adjust after that," Grant admitted. "I can't even begin to imagine what it was like."

"I can't... she's not talking about what she went through, yet," Fitz admitted. He let out a long breath, then shook his head. "But she's back. That's what matters. Sooner or later, Jemma will be back to normal... or as normal as any of us can be anymore."

Fitz gesticulated with his hands for a moment, then, "I came here to talk to you two about... well, you. Your dimension. How you got here. I mean, Coulson said you used a device the other Jemma and me made. I can't even imagine how I would have gotten the idea for it. I mean, I did the math for the fun of it back when I was at SciOps Academy; punching through dimensional walls from one reality into another.  It would have to be brute force, no way to do it elegantly." Fitz started to pace as he talked, and Grant quickly lost the thread of what the scientist was saying - something about... _Honestly I don't even know enough to know how confused I should be by all this._

"We really can't help you with all those technical details," Kara interrupted Fitz as he paused for breath. She fiddled with her phone for a moment, then handed it to the scientist. "We have some pictures, Grant has some recordings of you and Simmons talking about it, the schematics we took from Hydra that you two used to build it."

Fitz flipped through the pictures. "Tesseract Fuel Cell... from the plasma weapon we found in Peru?"

Grant nodded. "When... when Skye brought Hydra into the Playground, that was one of the things the four of us - Kara, the other Simmons, other you, me - managed to get away with. Grabbed a data-drive from a scientist who was ransacking your lab, and when you decrypted it, found those almost finished schematics-"

"Bloody brilliant schematics," Fitz said, inhaling sharply as be brought them up on the phone. "Whatever Hydra bastard designed this might be evil, but these designs... they're beautiful..." He zoomed in one one section of the image. "Well that makes perfect sense. Channel the Tesseract energy through itself, opening two focused holes into the other end of space right through each other... angle the dimensional sheer... And these bracelets it mentions - prevents the radiation from killing you on the spot."

"In theory... they seemed to work," Kara said, opening a side table and taking the ones they'd worn when they arrived. She handed them to Fitz.

"Bloody brilliant," Fitz said again, handing Kara back her phone as he looked the bracelets over closely. "I can't even imagine how anyone came up with these. But you can tell where Simmons improved on the design... the one in the schematics... don't think it would have worked... These though... a little rubbish, wouldn't want to use them again, I think, but that can be improved on." Fitz looked back up at the two of them.

"I'm guessing there wasn't a lot of time for testing?"

"Not even a little. It was kind of a 'Hydra has us cornered and we have no other options' sort of thing," Grant explained. "Which is why it's just Kara and me, there's no... other you and Simmons here as well. They had to come through after us, to keep calibrating the device to the last second...  and Sk- Hydra got to them before they could come through..."

"I can't promise any sort of fast creation. That device is - well, complicated would be an oversimplification, and I'm sure I don't really understand all the underlying principles and math that went into the design yet... and I can't even imagine how I'd make new bracelets like these two," he held them up, "that would be safe to use without Simmons's help. And there's a lot else going on..." Fitz trailed off for a moment, looking at Grant.

"He thought he was saving our lives, did you know?" Fitz said, and it took Grant a moment to realize who 'he' was, to register the change of subject. "I was so sure he was... brainwashed, that Garrett had some sort of direct, overt control over him. That he really was the guy I thought I'd know, my friend..."

"We went into the Medpod, trying to get away from him after he came to 'cross us off' on Garrett's orders." Fitz's tone was softer, slower, almost maudlin, or even... disassociated with the events. "He couldn't break in... we begged... tried to get him to let us go... he ejected the pod. I asked him, months later, when he was a prisoner here... why he did it." Fitz shook his head, "He said it was the only way he thought he could give us a chance. Better than shooting us in the head, like Garrett wanted him to."

Fitz laughed bitterly, "And the worst part is, he meant it, I think. He believed it. I don't know if he was tricking himself or if he just really couldn't see his way past being Garrett's minion."

_Well, at least there was something resembling a human being in my evil twin._ Grant found it very easy to believe, when he finally had a moment to think about it honestly, that he could have turned out a monster. He was a murderer - true, under S.H.I.E.L.D., strictly speaking, before the fall, his kills were legally authorized, but after? After the fall of the Playground? He was a murderer, and lying and killing were the things he was most skilled at.

And he knew what place he was in, when Victoria had come to him in Juvie. If his doppelganger's life was anything like his own until that point, then he would have been in a perfect place to be bent and manipulated in all the wrong ways. Whatever it was that Garrett here had done to this Ward, whatever another universe's Garrett had done to Skye... Grant didn't know, but he know how conditioning worked. How terrorists and criminals sometimes recruited young.

He'd never had to kill child soldiers, thank god, but some of the people he had killed had probably started out like that. Fifteen was old as a place to start, but fifteen year old Grant Ward would have been a lot more pliable than Grant wanted to admit, standing where he was today.

It didn't change the fact that the local Ward was a monster, but at least, it seemed, there'd still been something in him that had cared about people. In a warped and distorted way, maybe, but a real one.

"I'm sorry," Grant said softly. "For what he did. For what happened. Coulson told me you nearly drowned, ended up in a coma..."

"Hypoxia. I'm... better now than I was a year ago, but I'll never be the same as I was." Fitz closed his eyes and inhaled sharply. "I didn't mean to - to go off all sidetracked like that. I can't promise you I'll have another... one of these... dimension-crossing devices ready soon, with everything happening... with- with Simmons and-"

Grant shook his head, "I wouldn't expect you to drop everything, least of all Simmons, just for this, Fitz. It would be really helpful, but I don't expect it. Just the fact that you're willing to try is good."

"Willing to? Ward, even if you didn't want to go back to your dimension to rescue my alternate self, I'd want to make this," Fitz smiled. "This kind of insane nonsense science is why I joined S.H.I.E.L.D. to begin with."


	7. Something to Do

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Disclaimer:** Not mine
> 
> I'll freely admit, I probably don't have a good handle on Lincoln's voice. Also, the fight scene here didn't come out very well. I had a much grander vision for it in my head, but several tries got me nowhere on a better execution.
> 
> Thanks to Stargazerdaisy, my beta-reader

The Fine Dimensional Line

By Kylia

Chapter 7: Something To Do

**October 4th, 2015**

**The Playground**

Coulson hadn't really liked the idea of sending Hunter and May off on a wild goose chase to track down a dead Grant Ward. But after forcing Hunter to keep away from the alternate universe _good_ Ward had pissed the Brit off something fierce, Coulson had decided not to force the issue. He couldn't stop Hunter without telling him the truth about Ward being dead, which would mean Morse would know, and that was just too many people knowing, if they wanted to keep it secret.

_I really need a better way to keep my Ward and alternate Ward straight in my head because this is confusing as hell._ He idly wondered how someone betrayed by one of two identical twins but not the other would handle it.

With Hunter gone, and May joining him mostly to babysit him and keep the knowledge of Ward's death under wraps if Hunter somehow found out about it - her idea - that left him with less manpower and no idea what to do with his two cross-dimensional guests.

He couldn't keep them cooped up forever, and they certainly wouldn't stay confined forever. But he couldn't send them out alone, without supervision. Unfortunately...

_I can't ask Daisy to supervise Ward... or Ward to be supervised by her._ He could probably do with with Palamas - she didn't seem all that fond of Daisy, but she didn't have quite the same visceral hateful reaction, which made sense.

But right now, they needed to find Lincoln before the ATCU did, which meant he needed to talk to Rosalind Price. And so he waited while his call 'from the White House' connected with her.

**October 4th, 2015**

**The Playground**

In a way, Daisy was happy to have the distraction of the entire country looking for Lincoln. She had programs checking every news feed, every bit of law enforcement chatter she could get into - if someone saw Lincoln and reported it in, she'd know about it. But it was still a lot to work through as her fingers flew across the keyboard, refining the program, refining her search, hacking into new feeds and communication lines and removing ones that were too far away from where Lincoln could conceivably be...

_Come on... Come on..._

She wanted to go see Simmons, wanted to talk to her friend, but she couldn't, even now that the other woman was ready for visitors. _Because she's not ready to know about our visitors from another dimension._ And that was what Daisy wanted to talk about. About the insanity of it all - about seeing someone with Ward's face who wasn't evil, about someone with Ward's face _hating_ her so fervently, about the notion of having an evil Hydra-loyal twin in another universe, one who had betrayed everyone on her team the way her Ward had done to her and her team...

But she couldn't talk about that with Simmons. Not just yet, and so here she was, trying to distract herself with this hunt for Lincoln. She wasn't doing so well on the distraction front. She was getting somewhere on the finding Lincoln front though, she was pretty sure.

She was interrupted from another go at the ACTU's secure chatter - it was guarded by some seriously tough protective algorithms - when her phone rang. She didn't recognize the number...

_Lincoln_.

"Daisy?"

She couldn't help the sigh of relief when she heard his voice. "Lincoln - I am so sorry. I - I had no idea about the tracker, and if I did, I -"

"Don't worry about that now," Lincoln cut her off. "I need help..." She heard Lincoln take a shuddering breath. "I killed a guy - it was an accident I - didn't-"

"Lincoln, I know you. You wouldn't kill someone on purpose. What happened?" She was already rushing away from her computer, looking for Mack. _I'm going to make sure he tells me where he is, one way or another._ She had to bring him in, she had to protect him. She had to help him, like he'd helped her.

"My AA sponsor - I came, looking for help... I thought I could trust him to believe me," Lincoln spoke quickly, frantically. "He saw the news report, blaming me for the attack. Came at me with a metal baseball bat - I zapped it out of his hand... oh god." He started to inhale quick shallow breaths. "I mean I knew he had some heart problems but not that bad and I just reacted. I didn't think what would -"

"Lincoln, stop," Daisy interrupted before he could work himself into even more of a frenzy. "It was an accident and we can talk about it face to face, but right now, we need to get you somewhere _safe_. Where are you? I'll come for you. Please, Lincoln, let me help you."

He gave her an address to meet him at. "I'm on my way. Stay safe." Daisy hung up, still looking for Mack - she found him moments later, and within 10 minutes she was on the way to the hanger.

"Daisy, what's the situation?" Coulson asked, catching up to her.

"Lincoln's hiding, and he's waiting for us."

"Good. We need to bring him in, preferably without the ATCU knowing."

"Even though he just killed a guy," Mack commented, sounding almost sour about the notion of helping Lincoln.

"I told you, it was an accident," Daisy insisted. It was. Lincoln wasn't a killer. He couldn't be.

"We'll figure it out once we get him here. In the meantime," he gestured to someone behind him as they reached the ramp to get on the plane. Daisy turned around, then shook her head, blinked and looked again. Still there.

Agent 33 - no, Agent Palamas - was there, walking towards the plane, a go bag over her shoulder and a holstered gun at her hip.

"Take Agent Palamas with you, in case you _don't_ get there before the ATCU," Coulson added.

"Coulson - I can't - you're giving her a _gun_?" She seemed like she was on their side, but they'd thought that about the other Agent Palamas, and look how that had gone.

"It's an ICER, I'm not an idiot. She won't be able to take on the entire plane herself, and you two can stop her if it does turn out she's evil." Daisy searched the other woman's expression for any sign of being bothered by the accusation - she'd have hated it in her place, but Palamas just shrugged.

"Given what happened with the local Ward and me, you'd be idiots to trust us completely. But I am on your side, and I'm going to go insane if I stay cooped up in that room for much longer. I am a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent and I want to help as long as I'm in this dimension. I won't get in your way, promise."

"You don't hate me like... he does?"

"I can't say seeing your face fills me with the happy fuzzies," Kara admitted. "But you're not your alternate self and her crimes aren't as personal for me as they are for Grant. I hate Skye the Hydra agent with no last name, not Daisy Johnson the S.H.I.E.L.D. loyalist. But we should get moving, shouldn't we? We're in a hurry to rescue this electricity using guy - Lincoln?"

"Right," Daisy nodded. She looked over at Coulson one last time, trying to nonverbally plead for him to change his mind. She just... she didn't want to bring this complication with her. Not right now.

If Coulson realized what she was trying to get across, he didn't say anything. "I'd say it would better if Mack took point on the extraction, but you'll tell me he won't come if it's not you."

"That's exactly right. He reached out to _me_ , not S.H.I.E.L.D. I'm the one he trusts, not you, not the agency - and after you planted a tracker in his arm without his knowledge, I can't say I don't get why he doesn't trust you. So it has to be me."

Couslon nodded. "Your call," he turned, walking towards Lola.

"And where are you going?" Mack asked.

"To the beach," Coulson replied unhelpfully.

"So he's just as fond of trying to be humorously vague in this universe as he was in mine," Palamas observed as they boarded the plane. "I guess somethings don't change wherever you go."

**October 4th, 2015**

**Under Construction Apartment Complex**

"That is a lot of agents for one guy," Kara observed. She pulled out her ICER. "You stay here and keep an eye on Daisy's back while she talks to this Lincoln guy. I'll see if I can peel some of them off and make them come after me."

"That's a lot of -" Mack started, but Kara shook her head.

"Won't be when I'm done with them. I've had a lot of experience being outnumbered in the last few months. As long as I have room to keep moving, I'll be fun. Go." Without waiting for a response, Kara vaulted over the edge of the third-floor balcony they were perched on, grabbing onto the edge of the second-floor balcony to arrest her fall, then dropping from that to the ground, landing in a crouch.

Standing, she looked back up at Mack and waved.

"Showoff," her earpiece picked up Mack's muttered comment.

"Guilty as charged," Kara agreed, darting off after the ATCU Agents. Within a minute she'd gotten back in sight of them - without even bothering to take cover, Kara fired her ICER at the agents, getting one in the back of the head before the rest turned or took cover. Bullets flew at her, but Kara dove right, taking cover behind one of the large decorative planters, narrowly avoiding a spray of lead that had been heading for her skull.

Peeking over the planter, Kara saw that three of the agents had stayed behind to deal with her, but that they too had taken cover, making shooting them easier said than done. She started to turn towards where Grant had taken cover when she drew up short -

_Wait. Fuck._

For months and months, Kara _had_ fought while outnumbered, including at three to one or even four to one odds, and come out on top, but one of the constants when she'd faced those odds was having Grant watching her six and watching Grant's six. They'd fought together against Hydra and other targets for years, ever since SpecOps Academy, and they made a smooth, practiced, efficient killing machine - or knocking out machine, in the case of ICERs.

But now she was outnumbered three to one and she _didn't_ have Grant with her. That was a whole different set of tactics...

And she'd planned the whole fight around Grant with her, because he always had been for the last year and change.

_Fuck._ Kara couldn't let them keep her pinned - they'd get around her sooner or later...

She couldn't keep them all pinned herself, with just one ICER...

She had to go at them, and she had no one to cover her. But she couldn't close distance on all three -

She peeked over the top of the planter - one off to the left, behind a pillar, maybe 20 feet away. Another was nearly straight ahead, behind a different planter, 25 feet. The last - 20 feet, off to her right, behind yet another planter, but this one with a large bush providing even _more_ cover...

She fired off several shots, trying to keep them at bay, but when she peeked again she could see that the right one had moved a bit, clearly aiming to get around behind her, but before she could aim, she had to duck to avoid a hail of bullets.

"I'm firing non-lethal shots, assholes!" Kara shouted once the spray stopped. "You could at least return the favor!" To her lack of surprise, none of them replied. Federal Agents usually didn't engage in banter during a fight.

_Boooor-ing_.

Kara spent the next minute trading shots at them, as the two out the outside - the one on the left and the one on the right - worked their way around towards her. She couldn't keep them both at bay at the same time, and they used that to her advantage. And without Grant - or anyone - providing cover, she couldn't...

"I surrender!" Kara shouted, tossing her ICER out onto the open patio. "I'm standing up, hands up, don't shoot!" Kara slowly - very slowly - rose to her feet, keeping her hands up high and completely visible, moving her eyes constantly to keep a watch on all three - if one of them got trigger happy...

Thankfully, none of them did. They all came out from under cover. One stayed back and kept his gun trained on her, while a second walked towards her, gun at the ready. The third holstered his gun and took out a zip tie. _Perfect_.

"That's it, keep your hands up, you fucking terrorist," the agent with the zip tie said. "Any sudden moves and you're dead."

Kara said nothing for a moment as they moved closer to her, carefully. They weren't Specialists, but they knew their business. Cautious, careful, methodical...

_But not careful enough._

"No sudden moves?" Kara said when the one approaching with the gun was close. "You mean like this?" Kara kicked out, getting gun-approacher in the chest and destabilizing his balance as the one that had stayed back fired. Kara barely evaded the shot, then got behind the one she'd hit and locked her arm around his throat, human shield style.

The agent's tactical vest took the remaining shots as Kara used her free hand to force her prisoner's gun from his grip and tossed it aside - it was a bit of a dance to keep ahold of him as he struggled and to keep him between herself and both agents, but she managed, moving quickly. Zip-tie pulled his gun but couldn't get in a shot as she kept moving, not wanting to risk hitting his fellow agent. But that wouldn't keep for long... Kara released her prisoner, shoving him at the closer agent, then jumped up and delivered a jump kick to his back, sending them both sprawling. Kara was on the ground, rolling and grabbing her ICER before the last one standing could react.

"All units, stand down," the voice came over the radios at the agents belts. "A deal has been struck, I repeat, a deal has been struck." The agent lowered his gun, but not completely.

Kara did the same with her ICER and murmured into her communicator, "Mack, did we cut a deal with these guys?"

"Yeah, we did. Daisy's gonna hate it, but we did. Get over here now. If this goes south, I'm gonna want all the backup."

"On my way." Without sparing a second look at the two agents she'd left sprawling on the ground, moaning in pain, Kara turned and hurried back Lincoln and Daisy's location. There was one agent still standing, he could tend to his compatriots.


	8. Accidental Encounters

**Disclaimer:** As always, I don't own AoS. It's not mine. Yada, yada, yada. We can talk my salt about the course of the show, or we can get on with the fic.

Thanks to stargazerdaisy, for beta-reading

The Fine Dimensional Line

By Kylia

Chapter 8: Accidental Encounters

**October 5th, 2015**

**The Playground**

Coulson had told Grant he was clear to walk around the base, as long as he didn't enter areas already restricted to specific personnel - par for the course for any version of S.H.I.E.L.D. to have something like that - but he'd stayed in the room even while Kara was off helping Mack and... and _Daisy_ with their rescue of some... Inhuman. Lincoln Campbell, whoever that was.

_Inhuman. Such a... bland name._ In hindsight, Grant could realize that he'd encountered a few Inhumans under the control of Hydra, or voluntary members. People with powers, no other explanation for them... probably Inhumans, in hindsight.

But his S.H.I.E.L.D. had been brought down before that could happen - before his Skye could get the vibration powers that Daisy had here.

_But she had them when she attacked us at that safehouse..._ Seeing video footage of Daisy's powers in action was enough to convince Grant that his Skye had them now. That that last glimpse he'd seen of Skye, through the rift, blasting Fitz and Simmons against the wall like that, making the air shimmer before her hand - it looked just like Daisy's powers in action.

_Hydra must have exposed her to one of those... Terrigen crystals..._

Grant had spent the day catching up on everything he could about this universe, reading old mission reports and analyses and field research.

But eventually, he'd had to leave. And now it was late enough that it was unlikely he was going to run into anyone if he took a trip to the base kitchen. Fortunately, the Playground had the same layout in both universes, so it was an easy, and thankfully encounter-free, trip.

Until he reached the kitchen. Someone was inside, though only one dim light was on. Grant hesitated a moment, then shook his head. _Coulson's told everyone, I have free run of the base... If someone has a problem with it, we can punch it out._ Hitting something - or someone - sounded very therapeutic right now.

Grant stepped into the kitchen, knocking lightly on the door frame as he went -

And froze, when he saw through the poor lighting, Daisy Johnson spin around, kitchen knife in hand, raised up and ready to throw. Her eyes widened at the sight of him, but she didn't actually throw the weapon... yet.

They stared at each other for a long moment; Grant bracing himself to dodge, Daisy ready to throw the knife.

But instead, the moment just stretched. Grant felt like he was in some old-fashioned cowboy standoff, both of them waiting for the other guy to make a move.

"Sorry," Daisy said, taking a deep breath. "I... I didn't - I didn't expect anyone to be moving around this late." Her words were stiff, hard, badly covering a thick layer of anger. She lowered the knife.

"It's fine. I'll come back," Grant replied, not wanting to think about how similar his own tone was to hers. How bad he was at controlling his expressions, his outward displays of emotion, around any version of this woman.

"I'll be done in a few minutes, MirrorWard. You can wait that long, right?" Daisy turned around and returned to cutting whatever it was she had on the counter in front of her. Grant stepped fully into the kitchen, giving her a wide berth, making sure she had a clear path to the door.

Then he blinked. "What did you call me?"

"MirrorWard," Daisy repeated. "You know, after the Mirror Universe in Star Trek, where everyone is completely different in an alternate universe. I have to have some way to keep the two of you straight in my head," Daisy explained.

"Right." Kara had mentioned that a few times, even suggested he watch a few episodes of _Star Trek Deep Space 9_ for some insight into the idea of the Mirror Universe that _wasn't_ 'so badly overacted as the Original Series'. (Kara had strong opinions about the relative merits of all the different Trek series, and he'd had his ear talked off about them many, _many_ times.)

Grant stood silently as Daisy put her sandwich together and wrapped it in aluminum foil before sticking it in a toaster oven. He wasn't trying to watch her - he _wasn't_ \- but the kitchen wasn't that big, and wherever he looked, she was in his peripherals.

"Look, I get that you hate me-" Daisy started, apparently as unhappy with awkward silence as Skye had pretended to be-

Grant shook his head, "I don't hate you, Daisy. I don't know you enough have an opinion about you. But I can't see you without seeing _her_."

"Well I can't see _you_ ," Daisy began, gesticulating, "without seeing the other version of you, so... we're in the same boat here, MirrorWard." Daisy let out an aggravated sigh, tangling her hands in her hair for a moment before dropping her arms to her sides.

"If you're gonna be hanging around the base, doing missions for Coulson until Fitzsimmons can make you and MirrorKara a way home..." Daisy closed her eyes and took a breath. "We're going to run into each other again and again and again. So we should probably try and... I dunno, stop judging each other for what our cross-dimensional counterparts did... or something."

Grant crossed his arms in front of his chest. "You say it like it's so simple."

"Have you even tried?" Grant had no answer there. "I know I haven't," Daisy went on. "I've been too busy trying to come to terms with the idea that there's an evil version of me, out there. What that means about me."

Grant rolled his eyes. "I'm not interested in having a therapy session with you of all people." Every time he looked at her, every word that came out of her mouth, in that voice... Seething this much internally wasn't exactly healthy. _I need to hit something. The gym should be empty._

Daisy scoffed as the toaster oven dinged. She spoke as she carefully retrieved her foil-wrapped sandwich, setting it on a plate. "The idea of talking it out with you doesn't make me jump for joy either, MirrorWard. I guess no matter what universe you're in or from, Grant Ward never wants to talk about feelings and emotions and... himself."

_Am I supposed to feel judged by that?_ Ward wasn't the most emotionally expressive man, and he'd gotten more closed off since Skye's twin betrayals, but... what else would anyone expect. Grant watched Daisy walk out of the kitchen and saw her pause in the doorway, when she added:

"I just figured... before you showed up - there was no one on the base who I could actually about my Ward with. No one who understand the whole... everything. But with you..." Daisy swallowed. "I figured you'd be the only person who might understand. And I would probably be the only one who would understand things with you and... your Skye. It was a stupid idea. Momentary insanity."

Daisy left before Grant could muster a response, leaving him sputtering and groping for words.

_I..._

**October 5th, 2015**

**The Playground**

_What the hell was I thinking?_

Not just in asking MirrorWard that question, making that offer, because of course he wouldn't want to fucking share his feelings when he barely knew her on top of the baggage of her appearance.

But in even thinking of the idea in the first place? It had never occurred to her before that moment and yet...

She just started chitchatting with the guy like she was back with her Ward, on the Bus, S.O. and trainee.

_Okay, maybe not that casual, but still, Daisy, what the heck?_

Blinking, Daisy stopped for a moment, taking a breath as she tried to process her own mind. It was late... she was tired, and hungry. Her judgement was always bad when faced with that trifecta, but even then...

_Lincoln ran off, despite my best efforts to help him._ Because Coulson tried to sell Lincoln to 'Rosalind'. And then he sold S.H.I.E.L.D. to them.

_All to protect me._ She should feel guilty, but all she could feel was annoyed at Coulson trying to protect her like that, as if she needed him trading Lincoln for her. _I thought that's what made us better, the good guys. That we didn't trade people._

There'd been too many moral quandaries in the last few days, and Daisy hated each and every one of them. Her life was complicated enough without bringing in questions of... moral standing and right-side/wrong-side and...

_I don't need any of this..._

Daisy nearly bumped into MirrorKara as she rounded a corner, too lost in her thoughts - or avoiding her thoughts anyway - to pay attention to her surroundings. Thankfully, the other woman _did_ notice and drew up short, allowing Daisy to not have to worry about dropping her sandwich.

"Great. Now both of you are out and wandering at night. Should I be worried you're up to something nefarious?"

"I dunno, is being unable to sleep and talking a walk nefarious?" MirrorKara raised an eyebrow, and Daisy shook her head.

"Can be..." She let out a breath. "Sorry. Just - I ran into MirrorWard in the kitchen. It wasn't pleasant."

"MirrorWard?" MirrorKara laughed. "I suppose... yeah, that would be it from your perspective. Favorite captain?"

Daisy blinked. "Uh... Janeway." Really, Daisy liked them all, but for whatever reason, _Voyager_ had always been her favorite Trek series. _Probably the whole searching for a way home thing._

MirrorKara nodded. "Good choice. I'm more partial to Sisko myself, but Janeway's got a lot going for her."

_This is... surreal._

"Why are we... suddenly exchanging thoughts on Trek?"

"Why not?" MirrorKara shrugged. "Right now, my life feels like a Trek Episode, so it seems pretty fitting."

Daisy shook her head, pinching her thigh. _Nope. Not dreaming._ "No - but... why with me? You really are supposed to hate me." Sure, MirrorKara had said she didn't, but... _That doesn't make any sense. I'm hardly the only one here who hates... the Ward I knew. The whole team does, and then some._

"No. I don't even really _hate_ the Skye from my universe. MirrorSkye, from your perspective." Daisy just stared blankly, and MirrorKara let out a sigh. "Don't get me wrong, if she was in front of me, I'd shoot her dead in a heartbeat, and if she was bleeding out in front of me I'd get popcorn, but I don't hate her."

"Remind me never to piss you off," Daisy said after a moment. The calm, almost friendly way MirrorKara so blithely discussed killing 'MirrorSkye' or just... pleasantly enjoying her death was... very disturbing.

"Probably a good idea," MirrorKara agreed. "I make it a policy not to hate people in general, if I can manage it. Especially the enemy - when you hate the enemy, you forget they're human. And you forget they're human, you can convince yourself that anything goes, if it helps you win. I start hating Hydra... I start eroding the things that separate me from them. The lines I don't cross."

"Besides," she concluded. "Hatred gets in the way of the mission just as badly as any other emotion. Detachment means detachment - from every emotion."

_That..._ Daisy looked away. The other woman had a point, and it was a point Daisy didn't want to think about. Words echoed through her mind unbidden - _you should have run faster._

Shaking her head violently, "But MirrorWard hasn't taken that heart."

"Well, we're not the same people. Besides, the other you never slept with me. Tends to make it a little too personal, when that happens." There almost a note of mirth in MirrorKara's voice, but Daisy was a little too busy dropping her plate to the ground - her sandwich thankfully still wrapped in foil - to really follow up on that through.

"We - I mean, the other me and - they _slept together!?_ " Daisy wasn't even-

_What - what am I supposed to do with this information?_

"Yeah. You didn't with your Ward?" MirrorKara sounded surprised, stunned even. She stooped down and started picking up the shattered pieces Daisy's plate for her. Daisy dropped her head into her hand.

"No. God no." Daisy let out a confused grunt - the only word she could think of to describe the sound that escaped her lips - and crouched down to help the other woman pick up the shards of ceramic.

"So... you guys just never got that far, or... holding out for marriage?"

Daisy did a double-take, then shook her head. "No - not the latter. Never cared about that. We just... I mean we'd just admitted we liked each other to each other’s faces like a day before it turned out he was a traitor. Maybe 36 hours? I wasn't exactly keeping careful count."

MirrorKara shook her head. "Huh. Wonder why he moved slower than the other you did. Must've decided he didn't need to use sex to get under your skin, the way-" she cut herself off. "That must be weird, imagining the sex life of someone else who looks exactly like you."

"I'm trying not to," Daisy admitted. It wasn't like she hadn't imagined what sex with Ward would be like, way back when, but... for all her mixed feelings about the guy, she hadn't fantasized about him in that sense for quite a long time.

"Right. Sorry." Mirror Kara sighed, starting to drop her head into her hands before she realized she had ceramic shards in her hand and drew up short. "You two, in my universe... you were actually an item. Boyfriend and girlfriend. The first serious relationship Grant had ever had, really. And then he vouched for the other you, to get her out of Vault D, to let her rejoin us, that with Garrett dead, she was genuine in wanting to be a better person. And then... she betrayed us again."

"I don't know what your Grant Ward did to you, and to your team. I'm not going to say we can compare traumatic experiences with betrayal, because that's bullshit." MirrorKara shook her head, blinking repeatedly. "Fuck, I must be more tired than I thought."

"I think it's going around," Daisy said softly.

"Could be. Look um-" She cleared her throat. "You didn't hear any of that from me, alright? Grant wouldn't like me sharing all that."

"Hopefully there'll never be a chance for it to come up," Daisy said. She took the ceramic shards from MirrorKara's hands and - before either of could make this weird and surreal heart to heart in a hallway last any longer - hurried away, back to her room, so she could eat and then...

_Try_ to sleep.

Somehow, with everything that had happened today, Daisy suspected sleep would be elusive.


	9. ...And Make Little Baby Sharks

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Disclaimer:** I do not own AoS, obviously.
> 
> Apologies for the delay.
> 
> Thanks extended to stargazerdaisy, for her beta-reading assistance

The Fine Dimensional Line

By Kylia

Chapter 9: ...And Make Little Baby Sharks

**October 7th, 2015**

**Coulson's Office, The Playground**

"Sir, you wanted to see me?" Grant stepped into Coulson's office.

"I did," Coulson nodded. He pressed some buttons and a face that Grant recognized went up on the screen. "What do you know about Wolfgang von Strucker?"

Grant shook his head. "He was one of S.H.I.E.L.D's top scientists. Family used to be German nobility. Turned out to be Hydra, took over the whole show after Pierce died. The Avengers killed him... or something like that. I admit, I wasn't really paying attention after that, because I was busy running."

"The Avengers dealt with him here as well," Coulson confirmed. "With the death or imprisonment of Strucker, List, Whitehall and a whole host of the rest of the heads of Hydra, there isn't any visible leader. But there's a lot of leftover pieces. Everything we've been able to learn about Hydra suggests that for all their seeming unity, they're a mess of factions."

"Sounds about right. Former members of S.H.I.E.L.D. only made up part of the organization, as it turned out, in my reality."

"Same here. They had people in the military, government, major corporations... Hydra is still out there, and I'm sure they're rebuilding, even if they don't have a central leadership. Which is what brings us to this young man." Another face went up on the screen. "Werner von Strucker. Wolfgang's son. From what little we can tell, he was left out of most of his father's business, but I think he might know something."

"You want me to capture him?" It seemed like a reasonable idea... but also probably a waste of time. Still, if this was what Coulson wanted him to do...

"I want to find out what he knows, if he knows anything," Coulson said. "Strucker was connected to everything, and I can't imagine Strucker kept his kid from it entirely - he had to plan to bring him into the family business eventually. If nothing else, I'm hoping going after Strucker Jr. could draw someone out."

"Sir?"

"For Hydra to be able to infiltrate S.H.I.E.L.D. they way they did, they'd have needed powerful people in the US government. Powerful people that we haven't caught. And as long as they're still around, Hydra could rebuild."

"They'd know I'm trying to draw them out, wouldn't they? There's no way they'd just come at me, a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent for some kid they probably don't care much about.” He doubted Coulson couldn't see the glaring flaw in his plan, but that didn't mean he'd actually come up with a solution.

Grant didn't mind if Coulson didn't have such a solution though. He was used to having just an objective and near-total freedom to achieve it. Came of being a specialist.

"Not if they think you're the Grant Ward who is still Hydra - or at least not S.H.I.E.L.D. The one that kidnapped and nearly killed Bobbi Morse and nearly killed Lance Hunter..."

Grant stared blankly at Coulson as he said that. _So you're just as fond of absolutely insane ideas as ever, Coulson._ Not that Grant could really fault the worst of Coulson's insane ideas in his reality, since he'd agreed with Coulson...

Since he'd been the one to recommend it to Coulson....

Grant closed his eyes a moment and inhaled sharply, stuffing the thought back into its box.

"That Grant Ward is dead, sir."

"And almost nobody knows that. You, Kara, May and myself. Nobody else knows that the Grant Ward of this dimension is dead. May kept it under wraps at first - I don't totally agree with her reasons, but they were hers, but now that I'm pretty sure you're trustworthy, there's another advantage to keeping his death under wraps."

A pre-made cover identity.

_He trusts me enough to let me do this? That was fast._ Then again, Kara had proven her trustworthiness, and May had vouched for the fact that the other him was dead. He'd even gone through one that chair lie-detector that Eric Koenig had put them through in his universe, though this test had been administered by one Billy Koenig. _Of course, my Skye got through it, and so did the Grant Ward here._

"Sir... while I'm happy to hear you trust me, after what... the other me did..."

"I didn't say I wasn't going to want to keep a watch over you. Trust but verify. But I have to test that trust somehow," Coulson clarified. "As far as we know, every member of Hydra who actually knew our Grant Ward is dead or imprisoned. Mostly dead. The name, the reputation would be known." Coulson didn't need to add the 'hopefully' - Grant could pick it up in the implication.

"You'll be going in pretty blind, which I'm sure won't be fun." Coulson stood up and walked over to stand by the window, looking over at Grant.

"I've had to do it before," Grant pointed out.

"True. But I wish I could give you a better idea of what exactly you'll be looking for." Coulson shook his head. "Almost makes me wish May had taken the other you prisoner."

"He wouldn't have talked," Grant explained flatly. "I watched your attempts to interrogate him when you held him here the first time. Specialists don't crack."

Not unless you offered them something they wanted, not unless you threatened someone they cared about. Which is why Specialists weren't really supposed to have that. Or at least hide it, compartmentalize it. Pretend such bonds didn't exist.

_Well, I've never been the best specialist in that department, now have I?_ Even before Skye. He'd cared too much about the few people close to him. Always had. Always would.

"No, I suppose not," Coulson mused. "Seeing you... seeing this... other side of you. Makes me realize I did a lot of things wrong with him, though. I let my feelings of betrayal, my anger get in the way."

_Okay, no, please, don't-_ The last - no, second to last - thing he wanted to do was hear about his other self and Coulson's regrets or... whatever in regards-

As if reading his thoughts - despite Grant's carefully schooled blank expression - Coulson held up a hand. "A conversation for another time, if ever. Back to the task at hand."

"Thank you, sir," Grant closed his eyes a moment, opened them and then let Coulson go on.

"We don't know where Strucker's son is, but I do have a good idea of who might know," Coulson tapped his tablet and another face appeared. "Fallon Carmine. Hydra. Handled a lot of Strucker's money, from what intel the Avengers picked up from Strucker's base in Sokovia after they captured him."

"And he's still free?"

"Carmine's a wealthy and influential banker. He's got powerful friends, who - as far as we know - aren't in Hydra and don't know he is, and S.H.I.E.L.D. doesn't have the pull it used to have, to put it mildly," Coulson shrugged. "Until now, it wasn't worth going after him."

"But it would be the kind of lead that Grant Ward, ex-Hydra operative looking for a way back in might follow," Grant agreed.

  
"Exactly. I'm asking you to go out a limb here to get intel Carmine may or may not have on the location of a young adult who may or may not know anything or be able to draw our enemies out." Coulson picked up another tablet. "All the intel you'll need, on... the Hydra Ward, and everything else related to Strucker, Carmine and the rest of the organization."

Coulson held it out to Grant. "If this works, it will help immensely. But you don't have to-"

Grant took the tablet without letting Coulson finish. He forced a confident smirk on to his face. "I'll have Werner von Strucker inside of two weeks."

_Anything to get away from being at the same base as Daisy._ He still couldn't get their late night run-in out of his head, couldn't forget Daisy's attempt at a heart to heart...

_The last thing I want. Ever._

Coulson looked at him oddly for a moment, then nodded. "Go over the intel, let me know what you need for the mission and be ready to leave in 48 hours. The sooner this starts, the sooner we make progress."

"Understood, sir."

**October 8th, 2015**

**Henson Apartment**

"Daisy, Mack, Kara, move in! Something's attacking, Alisha's down!"

It took only seconds for the three of them to get out of the van. Kara was pulling up the rear, glad they'd given her a real gun for this mission. Not that she thought it was going to do as good against the walking hedgehog that apparently shot plasma from his hands, but she'd take what she could get.

It only took them a minute and a half to get to the Henson's apartment, but they were too late - Alisha's clone was dead, and her friends were too; holes burned in their chests like all the other victims, just like in all the reports she'd been shown.

_Fun_. And there was a giant hole in the wall, leading into the stairs of the apartment complex. _And... we're going in there, I'm sure._ Not that they had much choice, but even more than before, Kara felt severely under-armed.

"Sir, we've got three dead. We're gonna need backup," Mack said, speaking into his communicator.

"Lots and lots of backup," Kara mutterered.

"Looks like the killer’s on the-" Mack started, but before he could finish, Daisy pulled out her gun again sped for the hole in the wall. "Daisy, wait-Daisy!"

Kara was already behind the younger girl, and she leapt, grabbing Daisy's shoulder and pulling her back as she nearly fell to the floor herself, managing to hold onto a railing and keep herself up.

"Maybe _don't_ run ahead and get yourself killed?!" Kara said, spinning Daisy around.

"That _thing_ is getting away!" Daisy yelled, and Kara grabbed the front of the other woman's shirt.

"Yes, and if you get yourself killed, it still gets away, so we _stay together_. Christ, you're worse than Grant!" She didn't even realize what she was saying until she said it and gritted her teeth at the dark expression that passed across Daisy's face a moment. _Fucking hell_. She let go. "Go, I'm right behind you, but I _will_ Ice you in the back if you try to get too far ahead!" Daisy didn't say anything, and Kara hurried after her.

_I do not need this kind of headache._ From the exasperated mutterings of Mack right behind her, it seemed like he was thinking the same thing.

_Shotgun axe_. Not a bad idea.

**October 8th, 2015**

**Industrial Park 1/2 Miles from the Henson Apartment**

The trail took them half a mile away, into an industrial park, no lights and lots of empty rooms and halls, and soon enough Coulson's voice came in over their communicators, but scrambled, cutting out. Still, the words 'Daisy' and 'location' and 'copy' suggested he was trying to find out where they were.

"You're cutting in and out, sir." Daisy replied to him, speaking into her comm. "We followed the trail to the Industrial park about half a mile away. Backup would be nice."

"If you can give them an anti-tank rifle for us to fire at this guy, that would be helpful," Kara added. Anyone who could blow holes in walls like that and apparently handle attacks as easily as he had before was someone you needed to just blow the shit out of.

_Sometimes you just need to fire a freaking miniature missile at something._ One of the many times Hydra had tried to pin Grant, Fitz, Simmons, and her down while they ran had involved two helicopters, with machine guns. The unfortunate pilots and gunners been greeted by MANPADS - man portable air defense systems. Stolen from a Hydra armory they'd hit while trying to stay one step ahead of their pursuers.

Kara's only regret there was that she couldn't see the pilots' faces when she and Grant came out of the building they'd been in and fired at their helicopters. Both had crashed and burned with a rather spectacular explosion. It had been... satisfying to watch.

"Backup is on its way. Not sure if we can manage an anti-tank gun just now," Coulson replied.

"Well, if Stark still made weapons, you could just ask him," Kara pointed out. "Hell, if you told him you were alive, he might even do one just for you." Daisy shot a glare at her, and Kara held up a hand. "Sorry."

_She just has no sense of humor sometimes._

"How did I let you talk me into this?" Mack asked, obviously Daisy. "I had a garage full of new tools, my own espresso machine..."

Daisy ignored the question. "We've got to figure out how this thing is finding Inhumans, and why it's killing them."

"I know why," Mack said confidently. Kara quirked an eyebrow.

"Oh, did it sit down and have a chat with you about it over tea?" Kara asked. "Maybe stirred in the sugar with one of its-"

"Kara!" Daisy hissed.

"This is instinct. It's like a great white shark. Built to eat, sleep-"

"And kill," Daisy finished Mack's sentence.

"Nothing is built to kill just for the hell of it. That takes an intellect. Unless this killing actually feeds it somehow, I'd bet there's something a lot more malevolent going on here," Kara disagreed. If she had to guess, and this killer was an Inhuman, she'd say it was some sort of self-hatred, a disgust at what he'd become and a desire to rid the world of the abomination that he was.

"I was gonna say 'make little baby sharks', but then _Jaws_ is older than both of you, so..." He trailed off, then seemed about to say something, but was cut off by the sound of a door swinging closed somewhere up ahead, that whining screech as some hinge that needed grease was worked, hard.

There was a closed door, just ahead.

  
"Do we have movement?"

Mack shook his head in response to Daisy. "I dunno, can't see a damn thing."

"Only one way to find out," Kara said, brushing past Daisy to walk around her and take point, ignoring a slightly indignant noise from the other woman. She raised her pistol, both hands on the grip, as she approached the door. "Cover me." She took one hand off her gun and reached for the handle.

_Three. Two._ _O_ -

Just as she grabbed onto the handle, the door burst open and half a dozen flashlights on guns glared in her face, nearly blinding her, as everyone started ordering everyone else to drop their weapons. Kara closed her eyes for a moment, but had her gun leveled at the newcomers as well, trying to identify them when a familiar face stepped through the cluster of armed soldiers.

_Ah, so more ATCU goons._

"Everybody, stand down!" Rosalind Price ordered. "Stand down." Kara lowered her gun as the ATCU agents did the same - she looked back and saw Daisy and Mack doing so as well. "S.H.I.E.L.D.'s not the enemy, and the young agent Johnson here is someone you definitely don't want to piss off."

_Patronizing much?_

Price looked at Kara, raising one eyebrow. "I hear you made four of my agents look like complete fools, Agent Palamas."

"I wouldn't say that," Kara replied diplomatically. "They handled themselves a lot better than your average Hydra goon."

"Such high praise," Price observed dryly. "Rosalind Price, by the way." Kara watched Coulson walk into view and move to stand next to Price.

Daisy just looked at him, about to say something, her expression saying it all - 'What the fuck?!' - her mouth dropped just a little open, eyes wide, a note of righteous incredulity.

Kara decided to skip that. Because it was obvious what this was. "So this is the deal you made with them? Working partnership?"  
  
"Something like that," Coulson agreed. "The ATCU is here to help." He looked at Daisy and Mack as he said that, a pointed expression on his face. Kara cut Mack off before he could say something else and waste time second-guessing Coulson.

_When he makes up his mind, he's made up his mind, good idea or not._

"With this guy, whatever he is, I think we'll need all the help we can get. Welcome aboard the crazy train." Kara nodded to the ATCU goons - she even got a smirk/smile from at least two of them. _Good to know they don't all have their senses of humor surgically removed._

"Our two organizations haven't exactly gotten off on the right foot, but that was then and this is now," Rosalind gestured as she spoke, moving one hand from left to right. "Right now, we're here to contain a threat, same as you." She didn't turn back to her men as she gave her order, "Fan out!"

"I get that you cut a deal with them, but for the record, this **sucks** ," Daisy said, leaning in a bit, her voice low so only the four of them could hear.

"It's a means to an end. I'm not any happier about it than you, for a lot of reasons." He turned to Kara, "But you seem positively gleeful by comparison, Agent Palamas."

"I _don't_ get 'gleeful'," Kara protested, then she shrugged. "The way I see it, as long as we're both hunting this thing, I'm happy to let them in whatever it is. Better they're the ones who get killed by the plasma-throwing human-hedgehog hybrid monster than me." Coulson stared at her as she said that with flat equanimity.  
  
"No matter what universe you're from, you scare me."

"Thank you, sir," Kara replied, smirking - which only made his eyes widen as he was even more weirded out. "I'm a Specialist, sir. Scaring the normal agents with how cold and ruthless we are - or are supposed to be - is part of the job description."

"I don't think that's in the SpecOps manual."

"Maybe not, but pretty much every Specialist I've met seems to like it," Mack countered. "Let's go. We've got a freaky great white shark to find."

_Not a great white shark, Mack._ Kara didn't vocalize her disagreement again, though, as she followed Mack up a set of nearby stairs, Daisy and Coulson close behind. **  
**


End file.
